2015 SMRT Informatics Developers Conference Presentation Slides: Ali Bashir of Mount Sinai School of Medicine discussed methods for characterizing structural variation in human genomes across a variety of coverage levels.
The human reference sequence has provided a foundation for studies of genome structure, human variation, evolutionary biology, and disease. At the time the reference was originally completed there were some loci recalcitrant to closure; however, the degree to which structural variation and diversity affected our ability to produce a representative genome sequence at these loci was still unknown. Many of these regions in the genome are associated with large, repetitive sequences and exhibit complex allelic diversity such producing a single, haploid representation is not possible. To overcome this challenge, we have sequenced DNA from two hydatidiform moles (CHM1 and CHM13), which are essentially haploid. CHM13 was sequenced with the latest PacBio technology (P6-C5) to 52X genome coverage and assembled using Daligner and Falcon v0.2 (GCA_000983455.1, CHM13_1.1). Compared to the first mole (CHM1) PacBio assembly (GCA_001007805.1, 54X) contig N50 of 4.5Mb, the contig N50 of CHM13_1.1 is almost 13Mb, and there is a 13-fold reduction in the number of contigs. This demonstrates the improved contiguity of sequence generated with the new chemistry. We annotated 50,188 RefSeq transcripts of which only 0.63% were split transcripts, and the repetitive and segmental duplication content was within the expected range. These data all indicate an extremely high quality assembly. Additionally, we sequenced CHM13 DNA using Illumina SBS technology to 60X coverage, aligned these reads to the GRCh37, GRCh38, and CHM13_1.1 assemblies and performed variant calling using the SpeedSeq pipeline. The number of single nucleotide variants (SNV) and indels was comparable between GRCh37 and GRCh38. Regions that showed increased SNV density in GRCh38 compared to GRCh37 could be attributed to the addition of centromeric alpha satellite sequence to the reference assembly. Alternatively, regions of decreased SNV density in GRCh38 were concentrated in regions that were improved from BAC based sequencing of CHM1 such as 1p12 and 1q21 containing the SRGAP2 gene family. The alignment of PacBio reads to GRCh37 and GRCh38 assemblies allowed us to resolve complex loci such as the MHC region where the best alignment was to the DBB (A2-B57-DR7) haplotype. Finally, we will discuss how combining the two high quality mole assemblies can be used for benchmarking and novel bioinformatics tool development.
Satellite repeats are a structural component of centromeres and telomeres, and in some instances their divergence is known to drive speciation. Due to their highly repetitive nature, satellite sequences have been understudied and underrepresented in genome assemblies. To investigate their turnover in great apes, we studied satellite repeats of unit sizes up to 50?bp in human, chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, using unassembled short and long sequencing reads. The density of satellite repeats, as identified from accurate short reads (Illumina), varied greatly among great ape genomes. These were dominated by a handful of abundant repeated motifs, frequently shared among species, which formed two groups: (1) the (AATGG)n repeat (critical for heat shock response) and its derivatives; and (2) subtelomeric 32-mers involved in telomeric metabolism. Using the densities of abundant repeats, individuals could be classified into species. However clustering did not reproduce the accepted species phylogeny, suggesting rapid repeat evolution. Several abundant repeats were enriched in males vs. females; using Y chromosome assemblies or FIuorescent In Situ Hybridization, we validated their location on the Y. Finally, applying a novel computational tool, we identified many satellite repeats completely embedded within long Oxford Nanopore and Pacific Biosciences reads. Such repeats were up to 59?kb in length and consisted of perfect repeats interspersed with other similar sequences. Our results based on sequencing reads generated with three different technologies provide the first detailed characterization of great ape satellite repeats, and open new avenues for exploring their functions. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Contaminant sequences that appear in published genomes can cause numerous problems for downstream analyses, particularly for evolutionary studies and metagenomics projects. Our large-scale scan of complete and draft bacterial and archaeal genomes in the NCBI RefSeq database reveals that 2250 genomes are contaminated by human sequence. The contaminant sequences derive primarily from high-copy human repeat regions, which themselves are not adequately represented in the current human reference genome, GRCh38. The absence of the sequences from the human assembly offers a likely explanation for their presence in bacterial assemblies. In some cases, the contaminating contigs have been erroneously annotated as containing protein-coding sequences, which over time have propagated to create spurious protein “families” across multiple prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. As a result, 3437 spurious protein entries are currently present in the widely used nr and TrEMBL protein databases. We report here an extensive list of contaminant sequences in bacterial genome assemblies and the proteins associated with them. We found that nearly all contaminants occurred in small contigs in draft genomes, which suggests that filtering out small contigs from draft genome assemblies may mitigate the issue of contamination while still keeping nearly all of the genuine genomic sequences. © 2019 Breitwieser et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
In order to provide a comprehensive resource for human structural variants (SVs), we generated long-read sequence data and analyzed SVs for fifteen human genomes. We sequence resolved 99,604 insertions, deletions, and inversions including 2,238 (1.6 Mbp) that are shared among all discovery genomes with an additional 13,053 (6.9 Mbp) present in the majority, indicating minor alleles or errors in the reference. Genotyping in 440 additional genomes confirms the most common SVs in unique euchromatin are now sequence resolved. We report a ninefold SV bias toward the last 5 Mbp of human chromosomes with nearly 55% of all VNTRs (variable number of tandem repeats) mapping to this portion of the genome. We identify SVs affecting coding and noncoding regulatory loci improving annotation and interpretation of functional variation. These data provide the framework to construct a canonical human reference and a resource for developing advanced representations capable of capturing allelic diversity. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Long-read sequencing, CENP-A ChIP, and chromatin fiber imaging reveal the composition and organization of Drosophila melanogaster centromeres, which have long remained elusive despite the high quality of this species’ genome. assembly.
Despite the conserved essential function of centromeres, centromeric DNA itself is not conserved. The histone-H3 variant, CENP-A, is the epigenetic mark that specifies centromere identity. Paradoxically, CENP-A normally assembles on particular sequences at specific genomic locations. To gain insight into the specification of complex centromeres, here we take an evolutionary approach, fully assembling genomes and centromeres of related fission yeasts. Centromere domain organization, but not sequence, is conserved between Schizosaccharomyces pombe, S. octosporus and S. cryophilus with a central CENP-ACnp1 domain flanked by heterochromatic outer-repeat regions. Conserved syntenic clusters of tRNA genes and 5S rRNA genes occur across the centromeres of S. octosporus and S. cryophilus, suggesting conserved function. Interestingly, nonhomologous centromere central-core sequences from S. octosporus and S. cryophilus are recognized in S. pombe, resulting in cross-species establishment of CENP-ACnp1 chromatin and functional kinetochores. Therefore, despite the lack of sequence conservation, Schizosaccharomyces centromere DNA possesses intrinsic conserved properties that promote assembly of CENP-A chromatin.
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