This is a test version of Biostars. For the public version, visit https://www.biostars.org.
How to accelerate BLASTING

Hi, I have 10000 unassembled contigs from a metagenomic analysis. I have no idea which sequence belongs to which species. I ran Kraken classification but that is not enough as I still have half of the reads unclassified. I have collected the raw material for nanopore sequencing from an infected plant. I do not know what kind of pathogen (virus, fungus, or bacteria) caused it. So, I tried to blast each contig remotely using the following command:

blastn -query filtered.assembly.not.aligned.fasta -remote -db nr -out blastoutput_unassembled.txt -outfmt '6 qseqid sseqid evalue bitscore sgi sacc staxids sscinames scomnames stitle' -max_target_seqs 1

But this process has been running for the last 7 days and still only results from 3000 contigs are available.

Could you please suggest if this process can be accelerated or any other alternative solution for the purpose?

ncbi blast sequence
• 2,991 views • link
written by anikcropscience • anikcropscience

Kraken (or I think Centrifuge?) would be the way to go IMO. They are specifically designed for this task, which BLAST isn't really. Check you are using the latest database versions etc. I could be wrong but I would expect them to be using datasets close to if not the same completeness as NR.

The most immediate answer to your question though is : don't use remote blast. Install a local copy.

• 0 views • link
written by Joe Joe

Thank you for the suggestion. Do you know of any NCBI database only for bacteria, viruses, and fungi? I have run Kraken and did not get what I was looking for since many of the reads were unclassified.

• 0 views • link
written by anikcropscience • anikcropscience

Which kraken database did you use? I agree that running a local version of BLAST should dramatically improve runtime, but I think I would alter approach a bit. If majority if your reads are not being classified as expected by a tool like Kraken, I would look closely into a handful of the unclassified reads. BLAST these, and look at all other databases available.

It sounds like you may have a contamination issue. If you used the correct one, the Kraken databases are very good at general classifications, so if samples are being unclassified, it sets off a few alarm bells for me.

• 0 views • link
written by dthorbur dthorbur

NCBI databases aren't broken down in that way as such, you have to filter by taxonomic ID numbers.

• 0 views • link
written by Joe Joe

2 answers

I've had fairly pleasant experiences using BAT/CAT https://github.com/dutilh/CAT. It is Diamond based so should be faster than BLAST while using the same logic. You'll still need a decently powerful HPC for it.

• 0 views • link
written by pbioinf • pbioinf

For your specific problem, having larger memory, many CPUs and a faster disk are the only ways to speed up the process.

Another way of classifying contigs without BLASTing is to bin the contigs and then annotate using GTDB classification:

This typically takes hours or a day at most.

• 0 views • link
written by Mensur Dlakic Mensur Dlakic

Oh that is cool to know. Thank you. I will check it out.

• 0 views • link
written by anikcropscience • anikcropscience

Log in to answer this question.

More posts like this