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Comparison of bacterial genome assembly software for MinION data and their applicability to medical microbiology.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Judge, Kim 
Hunt, Martin 
Reuter, Sandra 
Tracey, Alan 
Quail, Michael A 

Abstract

Translating the Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing technology into medical microbiology requires on-going analysis that keeps pace with technological improvements to the instrument and release of associated analysis software. Here, we use a multidrug-resistant Enterobacter kobei isolate as a model organism to compare open source software for the assembly of genome data, and relate this to the time taken to generate actionable information. Three software tools (PBcR, Canu and miniasm) were used to assemble MinION data and a fourth (SPAdes) was used to combine MinION and Illumina data to produce a hybrid assembly. All four had a similar number of contigs and were more contiguous than the assembly using Illumina data alone, with SPAdes producing a single chromosomal contig. Evaluation of the four assemblies to represent the genome structure revealed a single large inversion in the SPAdes assembly, which also incorrectly integrated a plasmid into the chromosomal contig. Almost 50 %, 80 % and 90 % of MinION pass reads were generated in the first 6, 9 and 12 h, respectively. Using data from the first 6 h alone led to a less accurate, fragmented assembly, but data from the first 9 or 12 h generated similar assemblies to that from 48 h sequencing. Assemblies were generated in 2 h using Canu, indicating that going from isolate to assembled data is possible in less than 48 h. MinION data identified that genes responsible for resistance were carried by two plasmids encoding resistance to carbapenem and to sulphonamides, rifampicin and aminoglycosides, respectively.

Description

Keywords

MinION, antimicrobial resistance, assembly, long reads, plasmid, software, Computational Biology, Enterobacter, Genome, Bacterial, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing, Microbiology, Plasmids, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Software

Journal Title

Microb Genom

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2057-5858
2057-5858

Volume Title

2

Publisher

Microbiology Society
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (098600/Z/12/Z)
Health Innovation Challenge Fund (WT098600, HICF-T5-342) (Department of Health, Wellcome Trust)