Simulating Illumina metagenomic data with InSilicoSeq.

Abstract

The accurate in silico simulation of metagenomic datasets is of great importance for benchmarking bioinformatics tools as well as for experimental design. Users are dependant on large-scale simulation to not only design experiments and new projects but also for accurate estimation of computational needs within a project. Unfortunately, most current read simulators are either not suited for metagenomics, out of date or relatively poorly documented. In this article, we describe InSilicoSeq, a software package to simulate metagenomic Illumina sequencing data. InsilicoSeq has a simple command-line interface and extensive documentation. InSilicoSeq is implemented in Python and capable of simulating realistic Illumina (meta) genomic data in a parallel fashion with sensible default parameters. Source code and documentation are available under the MIT license at https://github.com/HadrienG/InSilicoSeq and https://insilicoseq.readthedocs.io/. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.