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====== Notes on Sequence Assembly and K-mer Analysis ====== There is an overarching scheme to assembling genomes from DNA sequences: - Compare sequences and calculate the overlap between each sequence and each other sequence. Overlap indicates that two reads might e from the same part of the genome - Create layout of read overlap which represent contiguous part of the genome - Analyze each read and call a consensus sequence. The rate-limiting step for this process is calculating the overlap between each sequence because the process time increases exponentially with the number of sequences in the data set. Assembling genomes with a De Bruijn graph circumvents this problem by allowing the assembler to extend the genome independently of any other sequence. In order to assemble the genome with a De Bruijn graph, you must select a k-mer size such that the genome being assembled contains few or no repeats when divided into k-mers of that size. The graph is built by dividing each sequence into k-mers of a given length and constructing nodes such that each node contains a k-mer, and a directed edge from one node to another means that one kmer can be extended into another kmer.
