Installation

Optionally, you can copy the programs to a standard "bin" directory:

sudo make install

Or copy them to your personal ~/bin directory:

make install prefix=~

fasta-polymorph

This program randomly modifies DNA sequences, using given polymorphisms and their frequencies. The polymorphisms should be supplied in the UCSC Genome "common SNPs" format. Run it like this:

fasta-polymorph snp132Common.txt genome.fa > polymorphed.fa

To simulate a diploid genome, give it the same sequences twice:

fasta-polymorph snp132Common.txt genome.fa genome.fa > diploid.fa

Since the polymorphisms may include insertions and deletions, we might wish to record the alignments between original and polymorphed sequences. The "-a" option writes the alignments to a file:

fasta-polymorph -a align.seg snp132Common.txt genome.fa > polymorphed.fa

The alignments are in SEG format, which is described in the seg-suite package.

fasta-random-chunks

This program gets random fixed-length chunks of the input sequences. Run it like this:

fasta-random-chunks sequences.fa > chunks.fa

Chunks containing uppercase letters other than ACGT are suppressed. However, lowercase letters are not suppressed. (This enables us to abuse lowercase letters to represent things like methylation rates.)

The title line of each chunk receives the following data:

> serialNumber chunkLength sourceName zeroBasedStartCoordinate strand

Therefore, it is possible to get the alignments of the chunks to the input sequences, in SEG format, like this:

awk '/>/ {print $3, $4, $5, $2, $6 == "+" ? 0 : -$3}' chunks.fa > chunks.seg

The program has these options:

fastq-sim

This program simulates DNA sequencing errors. It joins sequences from a fasta file to quality symbols from a fastq file, then randomly mutates the sequences according to the error probabilities represented by the quality symbols. Run it like this:

fastq-sim sequences.fasta qualities.fastq > simulated.fastq

If the number of fasta sequences differs from the number of fastq sequences, the output will have the minimum of the two. Likewise, if the length of a fasta sequence differs from the length of the corresponding fastq sequence, the output will be the shorter of the two.

The fastq data is assumed to be in fastq-sanger format, with no line-wrapping or blank lines.

fasta-paired-chunks

This program gets random pairs of chunks of the input sequences. Each pair comes from the ends of a randomly-chosen fragment: the first chunk is from the start of the fragment's forward strand, and the second chunk is from the start of the fragment's reverse strand. Run it like this:

fasta-paired-chunks sequences.fa output1.fa output2.fa

The fragment lengths are randomly chosen from a Normal Distribution. Chunks containing nonstandard letters are suppressed, and chunk titles are made, in the same way as fasta-random-chunks.

The program has these options:

fasta-methyl-sim

This program reads DNA sequences and randomly assigns a methylation rate to every cytosine. Run it like this:

fasta-methyl-sim sequences.fa > meth.fa

It replaces Cs with symbols representing different methylation rates. It also replaces Gs with symbols representing methylation rates of the reverse strand. The sequences are first converted to uppercase, so that lowercase letters can be used for methylation rate symbols.

These symbols abuse the standard code for (ambiguous) bases, in such a way that complementing them works properly (e.g. v <=> b).

The symbols are interpreted by fasta-bisulf-sim.

fasta-bisulf-sim

This program simulates bisulfite conversion of cytosines with given methylation rates. It replaces the C symbols produced by fasta-methyl-sim with either "t" (converted) or "C" (not converted). It replaces the G symbols with "G". Run it like this:

fasta-bisulf-sim meth.fa > converted.fa

The conversion rates are:

Example

This example simulates bisulfite-converted DNA reads. First, we simulate methylation rates for every cytosine in a genome:

fasta-methyl-sim genome/chr*.fa > meth.fa

Then, we simulate a polymorphic, diploid genome. The alignments between simulated and original chromosomes are written to a file called align.seg:

fasta-polymorph -a align.seg snp132Common.txt meth.fa meth.fa > poly.fa

Finally, we get 1 million length-85 chunks, simulate bisulfite conversion, and simulate sequencing errors. The error probabilities are supplied by a file called sample.fastq:

fasta-random-chunks -n1000000 -s85 poly.fa |
fasta-bisulf-sim |
fastq-sim - sample.fastq > reads.fastq

Miscellaneous

DNemulator is distributed under the GNU General Public License, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. For details, see COPYING.txt.

Please cite: "A mostly traditional approach improves alignment of bisulfite-converted DNA". MC Frith, R Mori, K Asai. Nucleic Acids Research (2012) 40 (13): e100.

Website: http://www.cbrc.jp/dnemulator/

Email (questions, comments, problems): dnemulator (ATmark) cbrc (dot) jp.