Assemblathon 2: evaluating de novo methods of genome assembly in three vertebrate species

Bradnam, K. R., Fass, J. N., Alexandrov, A., Baranay, P., Bechner, M., Birol, I., Boisvert, S., Chapman, J. A., Chapuis, G., Chikhi, R., Chitsaz, H., Chou, W. C., Corbeil, J., Del Fabbro, C., Docking, T. R., Durbin, R., Earl, D., Emrich, S., Fedotov, P., Fonseca, N. A., Ganapathy, G., Gibbs, R. A., Gnerre, S., Godzaridis, E., Goldstein, S., Haimel, M., Hall, G., Haussler, D., Hiatt, J. B., Ho, I. Y., Howard, J., Hunt, M., Jackman, S. D., Jaffe, D. B., Jarvis, E. D., Jiang, H., Kazakov, S., Kersey, P. J., Kitzman, J. O., Knight, J. R., Koren, S., Lam, T. W., Lavenier, D., Laviolette, F., Li, Y., Li, Z., Liu, B., Liu, Y., Luo, R., Maccallum, I., Macmanes, M. D., Maillet, N., Melnikov, S., Naquin, D., Ning, Z., Otto, T. D., Paten, B., Paulo, O. S., Phillippy, A. M., Pina-Martins, F., Place, M., Przybylski, D., Qin, X., Qu, C., Ribeiro, F. J., Richards, S., Rokhsar, D. S., Ruby, J. G., Scalabrin, S., Schatz, M. C., Schwartz, D. C., Sergushichev, A., Sharpe, T., Shaw, T. I., Shendure, J., Shi, Y., Simpson, J. T., Song, H., Tsarev, F., Vezzi, F., Vicedomini, R., Vieira, B. M., Wang, J., Worley, K. C., Yin, S., Yiu, S. M., Yuan, J., Zhang, G., Zhang, H., Zhou, S., Korf, I. F. (2013) Assemblathon 2: evaluating de novo methods of genome assembly in three vertebrate species. Gigascience, 2 (1). p. 10. ISSN 2047-217x

URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23870653
DOI: 10.1186/2047-217x-2-10

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The process of generating raw genome sequence data continues to become cheaper, faster, and more accurate. However, assembly of such data into high-quality, finished genome sequences remains challenging. Many genome assembly tools are available, but they differ greatly in terms of their performance (speed, scalability, hardware requirements, acceptance of newer read technologies) and in their final output (composition of assembled sequence). More importantly, it remains largely unclear how to best assess the quality of assembled genome sequences. The Assemblathon competitions are intended to assess current state-of-the-art methods in genome assembly. RESULTS: In Assemblathon 2, we provided a variety of sequence data to be assembled for three vertebrate species (a bird, a fish, and snake). This resulted in a total of 43 submitted assemblies from 21 participating teams. We evaluated these assemblies using a combination of optical map data, Fosmid sequences, and several statistical methods. From over 100 different metrics, we chose ten key measures by which to assess the overall quality of the assemblies. CONCLUSIONS: Many current genome assemblers produced useful assemblies, containing a significant representation of their genes and overall genome structure. However, the high degree of variability between the entries suggests that there is still much room for improvement in the field of genome assembly and that approaches which work well in assembling the genome of one species may not necessarily work well for another.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: bioinformatics
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > genomes
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > genomes > genome annotation
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Schatz lab
CSHL Cancer Center Program > Cancer Genetics
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: 2013
Date Deposited: 22 Apr 2014 19:53
Last Modified: 19 Jul 2021 13:27
PMCID: PMC3844414
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/29782

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