January is Our 'Learn How SOAPdenovo2 Works' Month

January is Our 'Learn How SOAPdenovo2 Works' Month


We have strong interest in learning how various genome and transcriptome assemblers work, and SOAPdenovo2, being a cutting edge genome assembler, peeks our interest. Few days back, we started parsing through the source code, but, based on excellent suggestion of Rayan, we decided to set up a wiki to learn and write about the code. Here is the top wiki page for SOAPdenovo, which replicates the blog commentary about various source files. We also set up a page for each source file and listed all its functions. For example, the functions of stack.c are shown here. You can find other files by replacing ‘stack.c’ in the title with the name of the file of interest.

Our expectations:

1. We love digging into other people’s codes, because only by going through the code as well as reading written description of the algorithm, one can gain confidence about understanding a program. Studying the algorithm alone is often not enough, especially if you want to re-implement it or modify existing code-base. Reading the code without knowledge of algorithm is often hopeless.

2. In the past, we studied various other bioinformatics codes, and the method was to print out important files, manually go through each function, write notes on the margin, etc. The method works, but we often tend to lose those old papers or forget their significance. This is the first time we are using the wiki approach. Hopefully that will help us retain our notes, but whether our learning process improves remains to be seen.

3. If the wiki method is useful, we will use it to look into other important programs, such as Bowtie, Velvet, Trinity, etc. We often receive questions on how one or other steps of Velvet works, and realized that having annotated wiki pages for source files would help us direct readers to those pages.

How the community may benefit:

1. Many bioinformatics students are taking classes on algorithms related to next-gen sequencing, de Bruijn graphs, genome assembly, etc. Nothing can speed up the learning process more than going under the hood of a functional code and twisting its nuts and bolts.

2. Given how well SOAPdenovo works for genome assembly, many researchers may also benefit from parsing its code.

3. In future, we expect to modify parts of SOAPdenovo code to add other functionality, or borrow modules from SOAPdenovo into other assemblers. That may potentially be beneficial for BGI as well.

We will continue to play with the code and modify the wiki page. Right now, we are focusing on the following files - (kmer.c, prlHashReads.c, readseq1by1.c, prlRead2Ctg.c, prlRead2path.c, read2edge.c, prlReadFillGap.c, localAsm.c, bubble.c, iterate.c, orderContig.c, dfib.c, fib.c), and their wiki pages will be updated as we make progress. Among those, orderContig.c is the most important. A new blog commentary on SOAPdenovo2 will be posted, only if we make any major leap in understanding.



Written by M. //