Reference flow: reducing reference bias using multiple population genomes

Abstract Most sequencing data analyses start by aligning sequencing reads to a linear reference genome, but failure to account for genetic variation leads to reference bias and confounding of results downstream. Other approaches replace the linear reference with structures like graphs that can inclu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nae-Chyun Chen, Brad Solomon, Taher Mun, Sheila Iyer, Ben Langmead
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2021-01-01
Series:Genome Biology
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02229-3
Description
Summary:Abstract Most sequencing data analyses start by aligning sequencing reads to a linear reference genome, but failure to account for genetic variation leads to reference bias and confounding of results downstream. Other approaches replace the linear reference with structures like graphs that can include genetic variation, incurring major computational overhead. We propose the reference flow alignment method that uses multiple population reference genomes to improve alignment accuracy and reduce reference bias. Compared to the graph aligner vg, reference flow achieves a similar level of accuracy and bias avoidance but with 14% of the memory footprint and 5.5 times the speed.
ISSN:1474-760X