Abstract

When sequencing a genome, it is common that contamination from a foreign organism get mixed with the genomic material of our species of interest. For instance, if you are processing a whole body sample of an insect then you will sequence not only the insect, but everything on and inside of it. When building a reference genome, it is important to separate these contaminants from the genome of our species. Foreign DNA sequences could cause false positive identification when running BLAST analyses, the misidentification of genes that don't actually belong to the species, or they can be incorporated as 'reference' sequence for that species in the public archives when those sequences did not actually belong to that species.

About This Material

This is a Hands-on Tutorial from the GTN which is usable either for individual self-study, or as a teaching material in a classroom.

Questions this will address

• How to remove contaminant sequences from your assembly?

Learning Objectives

• Remove contaminant sequences from an assembly
• Identify contaminant species
• Remove Mitochondrial DNA from an assembly