Technology dictates algorithms: recent developments in read alignment

Mohammed Alser, Jeremy Rotman, Dhrithi Deshpande, Kodi Taraszka, Huwenbo Shi, Pelin Icer Baykal, Harry Taegyun Yang, Victor Xue, Sergey Knyazev, Benjamin D. Singer, Brunilda Balliu, David Koslicki, Pavel Skums, Alex Zelikovsky, Can Alkan, Onur Mutlu, Serghei Mangul*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

72 Scopus citations

Abstract

Aligning sequencing reads onto a reference is an essential step of the majority of genomic analysis pipelines. Computational algorithms for read alignment have evolved in accordance with technological advances, leading to today’s diverse array of alignment methods. We provide a systematic survey of algorithmic foundations and methodologies across 107 alignment methods, for both short and long reads. We provide a rigorous experimental evaluation of 11 read aligners to demonstrate the effect of these underlying algorithms on speed and efficiency of read alignment. We discuss how general alignment algorithms have been tailored to the specific needs of various domains in biology.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number249
JournalGenome biology
Volume22
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021

Funding

B.D.S. is supported by NIH/NHLBI K08HL128867, P.S. is supported by NIH 1R01EB025022 and National Science Foundation grants 2047828, P.I.B. and S.K. are supported by the Molecular Basis of Disease (MBD), B.S. is supported by NIH R01HL149883 and NIH R01HL153122, O.M. is supported by Intel, VMware, and NIH HG006004, and S.M. is supported by National Science Foundation grant 2041984. The authors acknowledge the Computational Genomics Summer Institute (CGSI), funded by NIH GM112625, which fostered international collaboration among the groups involved in this project. We thank the authors of the tools surveyed in this work for providing helpful feedback and verifying the information related to their tool. We also thank Martin Frith (University of Tokyo), Heng Li (Harvard University), Cenk Sahinalp (National Cancer Institute), and Steven Salzberg (Johns Hopkins University) for their valuable feedback and discussion. Andrew Cosgrove was the primary editor of this article and managed its editorial process and peer review in collaboration with the rest of the editorial team. The peer review history is available as additional?file?2.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Genetics
  • Cell Biology

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