Configure genome assemblies for use with PEPATAC

This guide shows you how to download reference genome assemblies for PEPATAC. Whether using the container or native version of PEPATAC, you will need to provide reference genome assemblies produced by refgenie. One feature of the pipeline is prealignments, which siphons off reads by aligning to small genomes before the main alignment to the primary reference genome. Any prealignments you want to do will also require refgenie assemblies. When using the default configuration files, the pipeline will pre-align to the mitochondrial genome, so by default you will need refgenie assemblies for the rCRSd genome (for human) or mouse_chrM (for mouse) in addition to the primary assembly you wish to use. Other common prealignment references are provided by ref_decoy.

1: Using refgenie assemblies

You have two options for using refgenie assemblies with PEPATAC. If you're using a common genome, you can probably download an existing refgenie assembly. Alternatively, you can create your own (see refgenie for detailed instructions).

Reminder, if you followed the install directions, refgenie is already included!

Download pre-indexed refgenie assemblies

Pre-built genome indices exist for common genomes including: hg38, hg19, mm10, and mm9. You may download the corresponding pre-indexed references directly from the web or using refgenie on the command line.

For example, get the hg38 bowtie2 index:

refgenie pull hg38/bowtie2_index

Build custom refgenie assemblies

For complete and detailed information on indexing your own genomes and building additional assets, see the refgenie instructions.

2: Configure the pipeline to use refgenie assemblies

Once you've procured assemblies for all genomes you wish to use, you must point the pipeline to where you store these. You can do this in two ways, either: 1) with an environment variable, or 2) by adjusting a configuration option. The pipeline looks for genomes stored in a folder specified by the resources.genome_config attribute in the pipeline config file. By default, this points to the shell variable REFGENIE, so all you have to do is set an environment variable to the location of your refgenie configuration file:

export REFGENIE="/path/to/genome_config.yaml"

(Add this to your .bashrc or .profile to ensure it persists). Alternatively, you can skip the REFGENIE variable and simply change the value of that configuration option to point to the configuration file for refgenie. The advantage of using an environment variable is that it makes the configuration file portable, so the same pipeline can be run on any computing environment, as the location to reference assemblies is not hard-coded to a specific computing environment.