TERMINUS--Telomeric End-Read Mining IN Unassembled Sequences.

Abstract

TERMINUS is a set of tools to map telomeres on draft sequences of whole genome shotgun sequencing projects. It mines raw sequence reads (from a trace archive) for telomeric reads, assembles them into contigs representing individual chromosome ends and BLASTs the resulting consensus sequences against the genome assembly to identify telomere-proximal genomic contigs. Finally, it estimates the sizes of telomeric gaps and identifies clones for gap closure. TERMINUS is implemented as a set of Perl scripts that requires two sets of inputs: the NCBI Trace Archive files for a given genome project; and ancillary genome assembly information. Results are output in spreadsheets containing information that facilitates manual validation. The TERMINUS package and supplementary information can be downloaded from http://www.genome.kbrin.uky.edu/fungi_tel/terminus/ farman@uky.edu.