title: Opera: reconstructing optimal genomic scaffolds with high-throughput paired-end sequences.
abstract: Scaffolding, the problem of ordering and orienting contigs, typically using paired-end reads, is a crucial step in the assembly of high-quality draft genomes. Even as sequencing technologies and mate-pair protocols have improved significantly, scaffolding programs still rely on heuristics, with no guarantees on the quality of the solution. In this work, we explored the feasibility of an exact solution for scaffolding and present a first tractable solution for this problem (Opera). We also describe a graph contraction procedure that allows the solution to scale to large scaffolding problems and demonstrate this by scaffolding several large real and synthetic datasets. In comparisons with existing scaffolders, Opera simultaneously produced longer and more accurate scaffolds demonstrating the utility of an exact approach. Opera also incorporates an exact quadratic programming formulation to precisely compute gap sizes (Availability: http://sourceforge.net/projects/operasf/ ).
authors.affiliation: NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Song
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Wing-Kin
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Sung
authors.forename: Niranjan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nagarajan
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016957:Burkholderia pseudomallei / Q000235:genetics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D020451:Contig Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics; D016678:Genome; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012984:Software