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Mapping One Repeat (37Pb) With Bwa/Maq

Hi all,

I'm playing with MAQ/BWA and I'm trying to map the following short read on chr22/hg19:

@repeat_1
GGTGTCTGGGACCAGAAAATAGTGAGGACCCTCTTAC
+
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

it should match twice at

22   +   22678160  22678196
22   +   22759880  22759916

when I use GWA , the read is mapped at 51304531 (?? 51304531+37 = length(chr22) ???)

bwa aln -N chr22.fa chr22.sai repeat.fastq > chr22.sai
bwa  samse chr22.fa chr22.sai repeat.fastq
@SQ    SN:Chr22    LN:51304566
repeat_1    4    Chr22    51304531    0    37M    *    0    0    GGTGTCTGGGACCAGAAAATAGTGAGGACCCTCTTAC    zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz    XT:A:N    NM:i:27    XN:i:36X0:i:4    X1:i:0    XM:i:0    XO:i:0    XG:i:0    MD:Z:2A0T0C2A0T0C0C0T1G1G0C0C0T1C0C0A0C0C2T0T1G0C0A0A0C0T0A0

when I use MAQ, only one position was reported.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, help ! :-)

Many thanks, pierre

bwa next-gen sequencing mapping

I compiled BWA for linux 32 bit (default is 64) . May be it's the source of the problem ?...

1 answer

Maq does not handle repeats, and will randomly report one of the mapped positions.

BWA has similar behavior by default, but the -R flag to aln will give you repeats.

Last time I checked, multiple hit reports are not in SAM format. For projects needing repeats, I normally use Bowtie.

For your question about the BWA output -- that SAM line indicates the read is unmapped. The easiest cue to pick up on is the 4 in the flag field. I'd expect it to give you one hit randomly assigned with either of those positions, so not sure why that is.

hey what bowtie parameters do you use when mapping to repeat databases?

@jeremy you can tell bowtie to report all mappings with --all or you can give an upper limit with -k (the default for -k is 1, so you only get the best hit).

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