title: Metassembler: merging and optimizing de novo genome assemblies.
abstract: Genome assembly projects typically run multiple algorithms in an attempt to find the single best assembly, although those assemblies often have complementary, if untapped, strengths and weaknesses. We present our metassembler algorithm that merges multiple assemblies of a genome into a single superior sequence. We apply it to the four genomes from the Assemblathon competitions and show it consistently and substantially improves the contiguity and quality of each assembly. We also develop guidelines for meta-assembly by systematically evaluating 120 permutations of merging the top 5 assemblies of the first Assemblathon competition. The software is open-source at http://metassembler.sourceforge.net .
authors.affiliation: Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA. alhernan@cshl.edu.|Centro de Ciencias Genómicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México. alhernan@cshl.edu.
authors.forename: Alejandro Hernandez
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Wences
authors.affiliation: Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA. mschatz@cshl.edu.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Schatz
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012984:Software