Hey Dr. Lindenbaum,
I have the same issue as the original question. I tried your pipeline, and I now have my sam files for my samples. When I try to merge the sam files together using picard, I get an error Cannot add sequence that already exists in SAMSequenceDictionary:, The sam files I am trying to merge are 4 lanes of the same sample, and each lane is paired end. For example the following lanes have a R1 and R2 read.
Sample 1 - Lane_01
Sample 1 - Lane_02
Sample 1 - Lane_03
Sample 1 - Lane_04
I ran BWA mem as you suggested, and I got Lane_01 - Lane_04 sam files. Since they are of the same initial sample, they should contain the same/very similar sequences. Picard won't allow me to merge these files because they share the same sequences. How do you recommend I advance from this issue?