Dataset Information

DIME: a novel framework for de novo metagenomic sequence assembly.

ABSTRACT: The recently developed next generation sequencing platforms not only decrease the cost for metagenomics data analysis, but also greatly enlarge the size of metagenomic sequence datasets. A common bottleneck of available assemblers is that the trade-off between the noise of the resulting contigs and the gain in sequence length for better annotation has not been attended enough for large-scale sequencing projects, especially for the datasets with low coverage and a large number of nonoverlapping contigs. To address this limitation and promote both accuracy and efficiency, we develop a novel metagenomic sequence assembly framework, DIME, by taking the DIvide, conquer, and MErge strategies. In addition, we give two MapReduce implementations of DIME, DIME-cap3 and DIME-genovo, on Apache Hadoop platform. For a systematic comparison of the performance of the assembly tasks, we tested DIME and five other popular short read assembly programs, Cap3, Genovo, MetaVelvet, SOAPdenovo, and SPAdes on four synthetic and three real metagenomic sequence datasets with various reads from fifty thousand to a couple million in size. The experimental results demonstrate that our method not only partitions the sequence reads with an extremely high accuracy, but also reconstructs more bases, generates higher quality assembled consensus, and yields higher assembly scores, including corrected N50 and BLAST-score-per-base, than other tools with a nearly theoretical speed-up. Results indicate that DIME offers great improvement in assembly across a range of sequence abundances and thus is robust to decreasing coverage.

SUBMITTER: Guo X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4326031 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

DIME: a novel framework for de novo metagenomic sequence assembly.

Guo Xuan X Yu Ning N Ding Xiaojun X Wang Jianxin J Pan Yi Y

Journal of computational biology : a journal of computational molecular cell biology 20150201 2

The recently developed next generation sequencing platforms not only decrease the cost for metagenomics data analysis, but also greatly enlarge the size of metagenomic sequence datasets. A common bottleneck of available assemblers is that the trade-off between the noise of the resulting contigs and the gain in sequence length for better annotation has not been attended enough for large-scale sequencing projects, especially for the datasets with low coverage and a large number of nonoverlapping c ...[more]

PMID: 25684202

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Project description:The whole-genome sequence assembly (WGSA) problem is among one of the most studied problems in computational biology. Despite the availability of a plethora of tools (i.e., assemblers), all claiming to have solved the WGSA problem, little has been done to systematically compare their accuracy and power. Traditional methods rely on standard metrics and read simulation: while on the one hand, metrics like N50 and number of contigs focus only on size without proportionately emphasizing the information about the correctness of the assembly, comparisons performed on simulated dataset, on the other hand, can be highly biased by the non-realistic assumptions in the underlying read generator. Recently the Feature Response Curve (FRC) method was proposed to assess the overall assembly quality and correctness: FRC transparently captures the trade-offs between contigs' quality against their sizes. Nevertheless, the relationship among the different features and their relative importance remains unknown. In particular, FRC cannot account for the correlation among the different features. We analyzed the correlation among different features in order to better describe their relationships and their importance in gauging assembly quality and correctness. In particular, using multivariate techniques like principal and independent component analysis we were able to estimate the "excess-dimensionality" of the feature space. Moreover, principal component analysis allowed us to show how poorly the acclaimed N50 metric describes the assembly quality. Applying independent component analysis we identified a subset of features that better describe the assemblers performances. We demonstrated that by focusing on a reduced set of highly informative features we can use the FRC curve to better describe and compare the performances of different assemblers. Moreover, as a by-product of our analysis, we discovered how often evaluation based on simulated data, obtained with state of the art simulators, lead to not-so-realistic results.

Project description:BackgroundThe accuracy of metagenomic assembly is usually compromised by high levels of polymorphism due to divergent reads from the same genomic region recognized as different loci when sequenced and assembled together. A viral quasispecies is a group of abundant and diversified genetically related viruses found in a single carrier. Current mainstream assembly methods, such as Velvet and SOAPdenovo, were not originally intended for the assembly of such metagenomics data, and therefore demands for new methods to provide accurate and informative assembly results for metagenomic data.ResultsIn this study, we present a hybrid method for assembling highly polymorphic data combining the partial de novo-reference assembly (PDR) strategy and the BLAST-based assembly pipeline (BBAP). The PDR strategy generates in situ reference sequences through de novo assembly of a randomly extracted partial data set which is subsequently used for the reference assembly for the full data set. BBAP employs a greedy algorithm to assemble polymorphic reads. We used 12 hepatitis B virus quasispecies NGS data sets from a previous study to assess and compare the performance of both PDR and BBAP. Analyses suggest the high polymorphism of a full metagenomic data set leads to fragmentized de novo assembly results, whereas the biased or limited representation of external reference sequences included fewer reads into the assembly with lower assembly accuracy and variation sensitivity. In comparison, the PDR generated in situ reference sequence incorporated more reads into the final PDR assembly of the full metagenomics data set along with greater accuracy and higher variation sensitivity. BBAP assembly results also suggest higher assembly efficiency and accuracy compared to other assembly methods. Additionally, BBAP assembly recovered HBV structural variants that were not observed amongst assembly results of other methods. Together, PDR/BBAP assembly results were significantly better than other compared methods.ConclusionsBoth PDR and BBAP independently increased the assembly efficiency and accuracy of highly polymorphic data, and assembly performances were further improved when used together. BBAP also provides nucleotide frequency information. Together, PDR and BBAP provide powerful tools for metagenomic data studies.

Dataset Information

DIME: a novel framework for de novo metagenomic sequence assembly.

Publications

DIME: a novel framework for de novo metagenomic sequence assembly.

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