Description of file formats used in D-Genies

PAF (Pairwise mApping Format)

PAF is the default output format of minimap2.

it is TAB-delimited with each line consisting of the following predefined fields:

Col Type Description
1 string Query sequence name
2 int Query sequence length
3 int Query start coordinate (0-based)
4 int Query end coordinate (0-based)
5 char ‘+’ if query/target on the same strand; ‘-’ if opposite
6 string Target sequence name
7 int Target sequence length
8 int Target start coordinate on the original strand
9 int Target end coordinate on the original strand
10 int Number of matching bases in the mapping
11 int Number bases, including gaps, in the mapping
12 int Mapping quality (0-255 with 255 for missing)

If PAF is generated from an alignment, column 10 equals the number of sequence matches, and column 11 equals the total number of sequence matches, mismatches, insertions and deletions in the alignment. Column 10 divided by column 11 gives the BLAST-like alignment identity.

PAF may optionally have additional fields in the SAM-like typed key-value format. Minimap2 may output the following tags:

Tag Type Description
tp A Type of aln: P/primary, S/secondary and I,i/inversion
cm i Number of minimizers on the chain
s1 i Chaining score
s2 i Chaining score of the best secondary chain
NM i Total number of mismatches and gaps in the alignment
MD Z To generate the ref sequence in the alignment
AS i DP alignment score
SA Z List of other supplementary alignments
ms i DP score of the max scoring segment in the alignment
nn i Number of ambiguous bases in the alignment
ts A Transcript strand (splice mode only)
cg Z CIGAR string (only in PAF)
cs Z Difference string
dv f Approximate per-base sequence divergence
de f Gap-compressed per-base sequence divergence
rl i Length of query regions harboring repetitive seeds

The cs tag encodes difference sequences in the short form or the entire query AND reference sequences in the long form. It consists of a series of operations:

Op Regex Description
= [ACGTN]+ Identical sequence (long form)
: [0-9]+ Identical sequence length
* [acgtn][acgtn] Substitution: ref to query
+ [acgtn]+ Insertion to the reference
- [acgtn]+ Deletion from the reference
~ [acgtn]{2}[0-9]+[acgtn]{2} Intron length and splice signal

Source: minimap2 documentation.

Maf (Multiple Alignment File)

Description of the format is available here.

Index file

Index files used in D-Genies are built as follow.

First line contains the name of the sample. Next lines describes contigs of the sample. They are composed of two columns, tab separated. First it the name of the contig, second it's size in bases.

Example:

Homo sapiens  
chr1    248956422  
chr2    242193529  
chr3    198295559

Backup file

Backup file is a TAR archive that can be gzipped. It contains four files:

  • The alignment file, in paf format, named map.paf.
  • The target index, named target.idx.
  • The query index, named query.idx.
  • The log file, named logs.txt.

Names of files must be kept. Otherwise, the backup file will not be accepted by the run form. When uploading a backup file for a plot job, logs.txt can be omitted.

Batch file

Batch file is a text file. Each line in the batch file describes a job.

Each job parameter is described by a key=value syntax. Parameters must be separated by one or many whitespaces. Order of parameters has no importance.

Job type is defined by the key type. It can be either an new align job or a plot job. The key takes value respectively align or plot.

When a file is used, it can be either a local file name in User files listing, or an url.

Comments starts with a # and ends at the end of the line.

New align job

A new align job is descibed with the following template.

type=align target=<target_file> query=<query_file> tool=<tool_id> options=<option_id1>,<option_id2> ...

Mandatory parameters:

  • type=align: we set the job type to align job
  • target: an align job needs at least a target

Optional parameters:

  • id_job: we can set a name prefix to the job. A random part will be added at the end. If not set, the batch job name will be used as a prefix
  • query: the query file against which we will align the target. If not set, target will be aligned against itself if possible.
  • tool: the tool use as aligner
  • options: some options given to the aligner, see below for details

For options key, option_id values must be separated by a coma. The possible values of option_id are presented on batch page. They mirror options in run page.

Plot job

A plot job can use two possible patterns:

type=plot align=<paf_file> target=<target_file> query=<query_file> ...

or

type=plot backup="<backup_file>" ...

Mandatory parameters:

Optional parameters:

  • id_job: we can set a name prefix to the job. A random part will be added at the end. If not set, the batch job name will be used as a prefix

Association table

Association table is a tsv file with 9 fields:

  • Query: the contig id in query
  • Target: the chromosome id in target
  • Strand: the strand of the contig
  • Q-len: the length of the contig in query
  • Q-start: the first position in contig an alignment starts
  • Q-stop: the last position in contig an alignment ends
  • T-len: the length of the chromosome in target
  • T-start: the first position in chromosome an alignment starts
  • T-stop: the last position in chromosome an alignment ends

If no match exists for the contig id, the corresponding Target field will be set to "None"

No match queries / No match targets

The no match queries file (resp. no match targets file) is a text file containing one query id (resp. one target id) per line.