LINKS 2.0.0

LINKS

Long Interval Nucleotide K-mer Scaffolder

email: rwarren [at] bcgsc [dot] ca

Description


LINKS is a genomics application for scaffolding genome assemblies with long reads, such as those produced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd. It can be used to scaffold high-quality draft genome assemblies with any long sequences (eg. ONT reads, PacBio reads, other draft genomes, etc). It is also used to scaffold contig pairs linked by ARCS/ARKS.

Location and version:

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$ which LINKS
/local/cluster/links/bin/LINKS
$ LINKS --version
/local/cluster/links/bin/LINKS: illegal option -- -

		Usage:  LINKS v2.0.0

help message:

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$ LINKS

		Usage:  LINKS v2.0.0
                -f  sequences to scaffold (Multi-FASTA format, required)
                -s  file-of-filenames, full path to long sequence reads or MPET pairs [see below] (Multi-FASTA/fastq format, required)
                -m  MPET reads (default -m 1 = yes, default = no, optional)
                     DO NOT SET IF NOT USING MPET. WHEN SET, LINKS WILL EXPECT A SPECIAL FORMAT UNDER -s
                    Paired MPET reads in their original outward orientation <- -> must be separated by :
                    >template_name	 ACGACACTATGCATAAGCAGACGAGCAGCGACGCAGCACG:ATATATAGCGCACGACGCAGCACAGCAGCAGACGAC
                -d  distance between k-mer pairs (ie. target distances to re-scaffold on. default -d 4000, optional)
                    Multiple distances are separated by comma. eg. -d 500,1000,2000,3000
                -k  k-mer value (default -k 15, optional)
                -t  step of sliding window when extracting k-mer pairs from long reads (default -t 2, optional)
                    Multiple steps are separated by comma. eg. -t 10,5
                -j  threads  (default -j 3, optional)
                -o  offset position for extracting k-mer pairs (default -o 0, optional)
                -e  error (%) allowed on -d distance   e.g. -e 0.1  == distance +/- 10% (default -e 0.1, optional)
                -l  minimum number of links (k-mer pairs) to compute scaffold (default -l 5, optional)
                -a  maximum link ratio between two best contig pairs (default -a 0.3, optional)
                    *higher values lead to least accurate scaffolding*
                -z  minimum contig length to consider for scaffolding (default -z 500, optional)
                -b  base name for your output files (optional)
                -r  Bloom filter input file for sequences supplied in -s (optional, if none provided will output to .bloom)
                    NOTE: BLOOM FILTER MUST BE DERIVED FROM THE SAME FILE SUPPLIED IN -f WITH SAME -k VALUE
                    IF YOU DO NOT SUPPLY A BLOOM FILTER, ONE WILL BE CREATED (.bloom)
                -p  Bloom filter false positive rate (default -p 0.001, optional; increase to prevent memory allocation errors)
                -x  Turn off Bloom filter functionality (-x 1 = yes, default = no, optional)
                -v  Runs in verbose mode (-v 1 = yes, default = no, optional)

software ref: https://github.com/bcgsc/LINKS
research ref: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13742-015-0076-3