simlord 0.7.1

SimLoRD is a read simulator for long reads from third generation sequencing and is currently focused on the Pacific Biosciences SMRT error model.

SimLoRD is a read simulator for third generation sequencing reads and is currently focused on the Pacific Biosciences SMRT error model.

Reads are simulated from both strands of a provided or randomly generated reference sequence.

Features

• The reference can be read from a FASTA file or randomly generated with a given GC content. It can consist of several chromosomes, whose structure is respected when drawing reads. (Simulation of genome rearrangements may be incorporated at a later stage.)

• The read lengths can be determined in four ways: drawing from a log-normal distribution (typical for genomic DNA), sampling from an existing FASTQ file (typical for RNA), sampling from a a text file with integers (RNA), or using a fixed length

• Quality values and number of passes depend on fragment length.

• Provided subread error probabilities are modified according to number of passes

• Outputs reads in FASTQ format and alignments in SAM format

System requirements

• python3

• scipy

• numpy

• pysam

• dinopy

We recommend using miniconda and creating an environment for SimLoRD

#!bash
# Create and activate a new environment called simlord
conda create -n simlord python=3 pip numpy scipy cython
source activate simlord

# Install packages that are not available with conda from pip
pip install pysam
pip install dinopy
pip install simlord

# You now have a 'simlord' script; try it:
simlord --help

# To switch back to your normal environment, use
source deactivate

Platform support

SimLoRD is a pure Python program. This means that it runs on any operating system (OS) for which Python 3 and the other packages are available.

Example usage

Example 1: Simulate 10000 reads for the reference ref.fasta, use the default options for simulation and store the reads in myreads.fastq and the alignment in myreads.sam.

#!python
simlord  --read-reference ref.fasta -n 10000  myreads

Example 2: Generate a reference with 10 mio bases GC content 0.6 (i.e., probability 0.3 for both C and G; thus 0.2 probability for both A and T), store the reference as random.fasta, and simulate 10000 reads with default options, store reads as myreads.fastq, do not store alignments.

#!python
simlord --generate-reference 0.6 10000000 --save-reference random.fasta\
        -n 10000 --nosam  myreads

Example 3: Simulate reads from the given reference.fasta, using a fixed read length of 5000 and custom subread error probabilities (12% insertion, 12% deletion, 2% substitution). As before, save reads as myreads.fastq and myreads.sam.

#!python

simlord --read-reference reference.fasta  -n 10000 -fl 5000\
        -pi 0.12 -pd 0.12 -ps 0.02  myreads

A full list of parameters, as well as their documentation, can be found under XXXX.

License

SimLoRD is Open Source and licensed under the MIT License.