1.9.1 (stable - relies on MIRA 4.0.2)
This version is archived on Zenodo:
1.6 (stable - relies on MIRA 3.4.1.1)
We recommend to use the latest version but see note below regarding availability of the proofreading algorithm.
Copyright Christoph Hahn 2012-2018
We encourage users to post any questions/comments/problems you might have concerning MITObim to our Google Group or the Github issues.
or (in emergency situations)
contact me directly under [email protected].
I'll try respond to you asap! If you don't hear from me within a few days, please just send another reminder!
This document contains instructions on how to use the MITObim pipeline described in Hahn et al. 2013. The full article can be found here. Kindly cite the article if you are using MITObim in your work. The pipeline was originally developed for Illumina data, but thanks to the versatility of the MIRA assembler, MITObim supports in principle also data from the Iontorrent, 454 and PacBio sequencing platforms.
Below you can find a few basic tutorials for how to run MITObim and I encorage you to give them a try with the testdata that comes with this Repo, just to make sure everything is running smoothly on your system. It'll only take a few minutes and will potentially safe you a lot of time down the line.
I provide further examples here as Jupyter notebooks. Get in touch if you feel like sharing your particular MITObim solution and I'd be happy to put it up here, too!
- GNU utilities
- Perl
- A running version of MIRA
As an alternative, I have generated a docker image for MITObim (see here). Find out what docker is here. The MITObim image contains a stripped down version of Ubuntu 16.04 and all necessary executables and dependencies to run the latest version of MITObim. Docker is compatible with all major operating systems, including Mac OSX and Windows (see here). The MITObim image has been tested on Ubuntu, but it should work without problem in any other system where docker was successfully installed.
To install docker on ubuntu should be as easy as:
sudo apt-get install docker.ioYou can then specify a working directory on your machine that will be synced with the /home/data directory in the image and enter the self contained shell environment to run MITObim:
WORKING_DIR=/your/desired/working/dir
sudo docker run -i -t -v $WORKING_DIR/:/home/data chrishah/mitobim /bin/bashNOTE that the first startup may take a couple of minutes because the above command will first download the image from docker hub. Subsequent launches will take only seconds.
The proofreading option described in the paper is at the moment disabled in MITObim 1.8 and will be enabled once I got a chance to thoroughly test its behavior with MIRA 4. If you are planning to use the proofreading functunality please refer to MITObim 1.6 for the time being. Sorry for the inconvenience!
The MITObim procedure (mitochondrial baiting and iterative mapping) represents a highly efficient approach to assembling novel mitochondrial genomes of non-model organisms directly from total genomic DNA derived NGS reads. Labor intensive long-range PCR steps prior to sequencing are no longer required. MITObim is capable of reconstructing mitochondrial genomes without the need of a reference genome of the targeted species by relying solely on (a) mitochondrial genome information of more distantly related taxa or (b) short mitochondrial barcoding sequences (seeds), such as the commonly used cytochrome-oxidase subunit 1 (COI), as a starting reference.
The script is performing three steps and iteratively repeating them: (i) Deriving reference sequence from previous mapping assembly, (ii) in silico baiting using the newly derived reference (iii) previously fished reads are mapped to the newly derived reference leading to an extension of the reference sequence. For more details please refer to Hahn et al. 2013. Detailed examples are demonstrated in the TUTORIALS section below.
The following tutorials are designed for users with little Unix and no previous MIRA experience. Tutorials I & II will demonstrate how to recover the complete mitochondrial genome of Thymallus thymallus using the mitochondrial genome of Salvelinus alpinus as a starting reference. Tutorial III achieves the same goal using solely a ~700 bp barcoding sequence as initial seed reference. For a quick exploration of your own data I recommend trying something along the lines of Tutorial II. Tutorial IV (to be added soon) uses a proofreading procedure to specifically reconstruct two mitochondrial genomes from a mixed sample containing genomic reads from two species. For convenience I always refer to MITObim.pl in the tutorials - The individual user will have to call the respective version of MITObim (e.g. MITObim_1.6.pl) during trying the tutorials. MITObim 1.7 (and newer) might finish some of the tutorials with slighly less iterations than described in the tutorials. Dont worry!
Preparations:
-
download MIRA (MIRA 4 for the use with MITObim 1.7 (and newer) from here or MIRA 3.4.1.1 for the use with MITObim 1.6 from here. Precompiled binaries are available for Linux and OSX. Help can be found here. You ll need to put the directory containing the MIRA executables in your PATH in order to successfully use MITObim.pl. If you can't or won't do that you can also tell MITObim where to find the correct MIRA binaries via the --mirapath option.
-
download the MITObim wrapper script and the testdata from Github, e.g. download the entire MITObim repository as zip archive (use the button on the Github page) or use git on the command line (
git clone --recursive git://github.com/chrishah/MITObim.git). -
make the MITObim.pl executable (
chmod a+x MITObim.pl) and extract the contents of the testdata archives (tar xvfz testdata1.tgz) -
OR just fire up the self-contained docker image (see prerequisites above).
Test the wrapper script by doing:
-bash-4.1$ ~/PATH/TO/MITObim.pl
which should display the usage (NOTE: From MITObim 1.7 onwards the -strain flag has been renamed to -sample), e.g.:
MITObim - mitochondrial baiting and iterative mapping
version 1.9.1
usage: ./MITObim.pl <parameters>
parameters:
-start <int> iteration to start with (default=0, when using '-quick' reference)
-end <int> iteration to end with (default=startiteration, i.e. if not specified otherwise stop after 1 iteration)
-sample <string> sampleID (please don't use '.' in the sampleID). If resuming, the sampleID needs to be identical to that of the previous iteration / MIRA assembly.
-ref <string> referenceID. If resuming, use the same as in previous iteration/initial MIRA assembly.
-readpool <FILE> readpool in fastq format (*.gz is also allowed). read pairs need to be interleaved for full functionality of the '-pair' option below.
-quick <FILE> reference sequence to be used as bait in fasta format
-maf <FILE> extracts reference from maf file created by previous MITObim iteration/MIRA assembly (resume)
optional:
--kbait <int> set kmer for baiting stringency (default: 31)
--platform specify sequencing platform (default: 'solexa'; other options: 'iontor', '454', 'pacbio')
--denovo runs MIRA in denovo mode
--pair extend readpool to contain full read pairs, even if only one member was baited (relies on /1 and /2 header convention for read pairs) (default: no).
--verbose show detailed output of MIRA modules (default: no)
--split split reference at positions with more than 5N (default: no)
--help shows this helpful information
--clean retain only the last 2 iteration directories (default: no)
--trimreads trim data (default: no; we recommend to trim beforehand and feed MITObim with pre trimmed data)
--trimoverhang trim overhang up- and downstream of reference, i.e. don't extend the bait, just re-assemble (default: no)
--mismatch <int> number of allowed mismatches in mapping - only for illumina data (default: 15% of avg. read length)
--min_cov <int> minimum average coverage of contigs to be retained (default: 0 - off)
--min_len <int> minimum length of contig to be retained as backbone (default: 0 - off)
--mirapath <string> full path to MIRA binaries (only needed if MIRA is not in PATH)
--redirect_tmp redirect temporary output to this location (useful in case you are running MITObim on an NFS mount)
--NFS_warn_only allow MIRA to run on NFS mount without aborting - warn only (expert option - see MIRA documentation 'check_nfs')
--version display MITObim version
examples:
./MITObim.pl -start 1 -end 5 -sample StrainX -ref reference-mt -readpool illumina_readpool.fastq -maf initial_assembly.maf
./MITObim.pl -end 10 -quick reference.fasta -sample StrainY -ref reference-mt -readpool illumina_readpool.fastq
The archive testdata1 contains three files:
-
Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq- 6000 simulated illumina reads (read length 150 bp, insert size 300 +- 50 bp) for the mitochondrial genome of T. thymallus as discussed in Hahn et al. -
Salpinus-mt-genome-NC_000861.fasta- mitochondrial genome of S. alpinus in fasta format downloaded from Genbank (accession NC000861). -
Tthymallus-COI-partial-HQ961018.fasta- partial COI sequence of T. thymallus (Genbank acc. HQ961018).
One strategy for successful MITObim performance is to prepare an initial reference from the conserved regions of a distantly related mitochondrial reference genome using a MIRA mapping assembly in a first step. In a second step the MITObim wrapper script is applied to this newly constructed reference in order to reconstruct the entire mitochondrial genome. Impatient users are encouraged to move directly to Tutorials II & III below which show examples for using the --quick strategy - a single step procedure - i.e. they don't require the initial mapping assembly to be performed manually.
a. Initial mapping assembly using MIRA:
Create a directory to work in and change into this directory:
-bash-4.1$ mkdir tutorial1
-bash-4.1$ cd tutorial1
mapping assembly with MIRA 3.4.1.1:
MIRA 3.4.1.1 expects certain files to be present in your working directory, which are named according to the name of your MIRA project and certain conventions. Let's say the project name of your choice for the initial mapping assembly is initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt. One could either simply copy and rename the files accordingly in your working directory or create symbolic links in the current working directory pointing to the actual files (replace "cp" with "ln -s" in the following command).
-bash-4.1$ cp /PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_in.solexa.fastq
-bash-4.1$ cp /PATH/TO/testdata1/Salpinus-mt-genome-NC_000861.fasta initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_backbone_in.fasta
run MIRA 3.4.1.1:
-bash-4.1$ mira --project=initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt --job=mapping,genome,accurate,solexa -MI:somrnl=0 -AS:nop=1 -SB:bft=fasta:bbq=30:bsn=Salpinus-mt-genome SOLEXA_SETTINGS -CO:msr=no -SB:dsn=testpool
or
mapping assembly with MIRA 4:
MIRA 4 does not depend on the naming conventions of MIRA 3.4 any more. MIRA 4 uses a so called manifest file in which you can specifiy the paths to your data (see below). Let us for the sake of this example create symbolic links, nevertheless. NOTE that we change the extension of the reference fasta file to *.fa. The reason is that MIRA will per default expect quality data for files with the extension *.fasta. The file extension *.fa tells MIRA to continue even without quality data.
-bash-4.1$ ln -s /PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq reads.fastq
-bash-4.1$ ln -s /PATH/TO/testdata1/Salpinus-mt-genome-NC_000861.fasta reference.fa
create a manifest file (named e.g. manifest.conf) specifying the parameters for your MIRA assembly (see section 3.4 here for details) in your favourite text editor or just type (or copy and paste) the following command:
-bash-4.1$ echo -e "\n#manifest file for basic mapping assembly with illumina data using MIRA 4\n\nproject = initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt\n\njob=genome,mapping,accurate\n\nparameters = -NW:mrnl=0 -AS:nop=1 SOLEXA_SETTINGS -CO:msr=no\n\nreadgroup\nis_reference\ndata = reference.fa\nstrain = Salpinus-mt-genome\n\nreadgroup = reads\ndata = reads.fastq\ntechnology = solexa\nstrain = testpool\n" > manifest.conf
Whatever you do, the manifest.conf file should eventually look more or less as follows:
-bash-4.1$ head -n 20 manifest.conf
#manifest file for basic mapping assembly with illumina data using MIRA 4
project = initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt
job=genome,mapping,accurate
parameters = -NW:mrnl=0 -AS:nop=1 SOLEXA_SETTINGS -CO:msr=no
readgroup
is_reference
data = reference.fa
strain = Salpinus-mt-genome
readgroup = reads
data = reads.fastq
technology = solexa
strain = testpool
run MIRA 4:
-bash-4.1$ mira manifest.conf
Look what happened:
-bash-4.1$ ls -hlrt
total 2.8M
-rw-r--r-- 1 chrishah users 17K Oct 21 22:50 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_backbone_in.fasta
-rw-r--r-- 1 chrishah users 2.7M Oct 21 22:51 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_in.solexa.fastq
drwxr-xr-x 6 chrishah users 4 Oct 21 22:51 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_assembly
The successfull MIRA instance created a directory initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_assembly, containing four directories:
-bash-4.1$ ls -hlrt initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_assembly/
total 2.0K
drwxr-xr-x 2 chrishah users 2 Oct 21 22:51 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_chkpt
drwxr-xr-x 2 chrishah users 15 Oct 21 22:51 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_tmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 chrishah users 9 Oct 21 22:51 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_results
drwxr-xr-x 2 chrishah users 8 Oct 21 22:51 initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_info
The newly constructed reference is contained in the file initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_out.maf in the initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_results directory.
b. Baiting and iterative mapping using the MITObim.pl script:
Run the wrapper script as follows (standard output will be written into the file log - approximate runtime: 2 min):
for MITObim 1.6:
-bash-4.1$ /PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -start 1 -end 10 -strain testpool -ref Salpinus_mt_genome -readpool initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_in.solexa.fastq -maf initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_assembly/initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_results/initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_out.maf &> log
for MITObim 1.7 and later:
-bash-4.1$ /PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -start 1 -end 10 -sample testpool -ref Salpinus_mt_genome -readpool reads.fastq -maf initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_assembly/initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_d_results/initial-mapping-testpool-to-Salpinus-mt_out.maf &> log
NOTE:
- The strain/sample name needs to be the same as used in the initial MIRA assembly.
After the process has finished looking into the log file will yield something like:
-bash-4.1$ tail log
End of assembly process, thank you for using MIRA.
readpool contains 6000 reads
contig length: 16667
MITObim has reached a stationary read number after 8 iterations!!
Allthough you have asked for 10 iterations MITObim stopped the process after fewer iterations because it has detected a stationary readnumber. It will have created a number of iteration* directories. Each of which is organized like the working directory above (initial mapping assembly), containing a MIRA assembly directory plus the referernce and readpool used in the respective iteration:
-bash-4.1$ ls -hlrt iteration1/
total 2.3M
-rw-r--r-- 1 chrishah users 17K Oct 21 23:45 testpool-Salpinus_mt_genome_backbone_in.fasta
-rw-r--r-- 1 chrishah users 383K Oct 21 23:45 hashstat.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 chrishah users 1.9M Oct 21 23:45 testpool-Salpinus_mt_genome_in.solexa.fastq
drwxr-xr-x 6 chrishah users 4 Oct 21 23:45 testpool-Salpinus_mt_genome_assembly
A fasta file containing the complete mitochondondrial genome of T. thymallus can be found in the final iteration directory. See its contents by doing e.g.:
-bash-4.1$ less iteration8/testpool-Salpinus_mt_genome_assembly/testpool-Salpinus_mt_genome_d_results/testpool-Salpinus_mt_genome_out.unpadded.fasta
Congratulations!!!
IMPORTANT NOTE: For real data this strategy might require substantial computational resources depending on the size of the illumina readpool (Memory requirements can be estimated using the miramem program shipping with MIRA). This increased memory consumption can be bypassed by limitating the readpool e.g. via an initial in-silico baiting step using mirabait (in-silico baiting program shipping with MIRA). While this strategy will impair the initial sensitivity of the approach and might therefore require more iterations to finish, it works reasonably well if a not too distantly related reference is available. This strategy can be performed by using the --quick flag, together with providing a reference sequence in fasta format. A detailed example can be found in TUTORIAL II below.
This TUTORIAL illustrates the quick strategy that I usually use in a first test. It bypasses the intial mapping assembly required in TUTORIAL I, i.e. you only need a reference in fasta format and your reads. To finish a mitochondrial genome it usually takes more iterations than TUTORIAL I above because the initial mapping assembly is less thorough. The big advantage is that the whole process can be run on a standard Desktop computer due to the substantial reduction in the number of reads to be dealt with already in the first iteration.
Run the MITObim.pl script with the --quick option, providing a reference in fasta format (approximate runtime: 4 min):
-bash-4.1$ mkdir tutorial2
-bash-4.1$ cd tutorial2
for MITObim 1.6:
-bash-4.1$ /PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -start 1 -end 30 -strain testpool -ref Salpinus_mt_genome -readpool ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq --quick ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Salpinus-mt-genome-NC_000861.fasta &> log
for MITObim 1.7 and later:
-bash-4.1$ /PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -start 1 -end 30 -sample testpool -ref Salpinus_mt_genome -readpool ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq --quick ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Salpinus-mt-genome-NC_000861.fasta &> log
You will find that with this approach MITObim will reconstruct the mitochondrial genome and reach a stationary number of mitochondrial reads only after 15 (or less) iterations. The result should nevertheless be equal to that obtained in TUTORIAL I and we were able to bypass the increased memory requirements of the initial MIRA mapping assembly.
CONGRATULATIONS!! ..but, there is more..
This tutorial reconstructs the mt genome of T. thymallus solely using a partial mitochondrial COI sequence as starting seed. NOTE that we also use the new --clean option which tells MITObim to always only keep the latest two iteration directories to save space (approximate runtime: 20 min):
-bash-1.4$ mkdir tutorial3
-bash-1.4$ cd tutorial3
for MITObim 1.6:
-bash-1.4$ ~/PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -strain testpool -ref Tthymallus-COI -readpool ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq --quick ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-COI-partial-HQ961018.fasta -end 100 --noshow --clean &> log
for MITObim 1.7 and later:
-bash-1.4$ ~/PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -sample testpool -ref Tthymallus-COI -readpool ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq --quick ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-COI-partial-HQ961018.fasta -end 100 --clean &> log
MITObim reconstructs the mitchondrial genome in 82 (or less) iterations.
For "well behaved" datasets the standard mapping assembly can be substituted by a de novo assembly (--denovo flag). Utilizing read pair information (--paired flag) can further speed up the reconstruction if run in de novo mode. This however will not decrease the number of necessary iterations in standard mapping mode.
Test this strategy, like so (approximate runtime: 10 min):
-bash-4.1$ mkdir tutorial3-denovo
-bash-4.1$ cd tutorial3-denovo
for MITObim 1.6:
-bash-4.1$ ~/PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -strain testpool -ref Tthymallus-COI -readpool ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq --quick ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-COI-partial-HQ961018.fasta -end 50 --noshow --denovo --paired --clean &> log
for MITObim 1.7 and later:
-bash-4.1$ ~/PATH/TO/MITObim.pl -sample testpool -ref Tthymallus-COI -readpool ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-150bp-300sd50-interleaved.fastq --quick ~/PATH/TO/testdata1/Tthymallus-COI-partial-HQ961018.fasta -end 50 --denovo --paired --clean &> log
This strategy reconstructs the correct mitochondrial genome in only 31 (or less) iterations.