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Problem about samtools sort and tview, Who can help me?

Hello everyboday, I am a newbie, my sam file size is about 45,786 kB, however after I use the samtools sort command, the .bai file produced is just only 1 kb, I wander it is right. In addition, after I use the samtools tview command, the result show a line N and nothing. I don't know where the problem is, who can help me?

[HESmith]

1) Optimize your chromatin immunoprecipitation (see this reference for guidance).

2) Optimize your library prep, using same amount of input chromatin equal to the amount recovered by ChIP.

Good luck!

[fh331]

@HESmith

Thanks very much. I highly appreciate help from all the experienced users.

For future reference, what can I do better to avoid getting so much duplication levels in chipseq samples? Is it better to start with a lot of DNA, less number of pcr cycles during library prepartion? Any tips would make my life way easier!

[fh331]

Hi Chipper,

Thanks for the reply. How does this tview work? I can't seem to find anything about it besides this: http://samtools.sourceforge.net/tview.shtml

which isn't very informative

found it in samtools manual!!! thanks

[HESmith]

'tview' is a terminal-based genome viewer. It would allow a quick spot-check of duplication (by visualizing the endpoints of the aligned reads), but it wouldn't calculate the fraction of your reads that are unique.

[fh331]

Samtools tview

Always look at the reads, not just the stats. The number of unique fragments is what matters, not the duplication rate. 80% duplicates would be useless if you sequenced 2 M reads, but may be ok if you sequenced 200 M.

Hi Chipper,

Thanks for the reply. How does this tview work? I can't seem to find anything about it besides this: http://samtools.sourceforge.net/tview.shtml

which isn't very informative

[HESmith]

Glad that you were able to sort out the problem.

[fh331]

Duplicate reads are identified by alignment (chromosome/position) information. You want to determine if that information is the same for facility vs. self alignments. Find a few duplicates in the former, then examine the same reads in the latter. Either the alignment information will match (which means that bamtools is not counting the duplicates) or not (indicates a discrepancy b/t the aligners) or the duplicates are missing from the latter (indicates removal of duplicates).

I ran piccard MarkDuplicates on my self-aligned bams and if i check the stats on bamtools after marking duplicates, it returns the same level of duplication. So i think i was just not doing it the right way. After running bwa, I guess i need to markduplicates before checking stats. Something learnt by newbie!

[Chipper]

Samtools tview

Always look at the reads, not just the stats. The number of unique fragments is what matters, not the duplication rate. 80% duplicates would be useless if you sequenced 2 M reads, but may be ok if you sequenced 200 M.

[HESmith]

Do you mean I should just extract some duplicated reads from the facility-generated bam and see if they're present in my self-generated bam?

Duplicate reads are identified by alignment (chromosome/position) information. You want to determine if that information is the same for facility vs. self alignments. Find a few duplicates in the former, then examine the same reads in the latter. Either the alignment information will match (which means that bamtools is not counting the duplicates) or not (indicates a discrepancy b/t the aligners) or the duplicates are missing from the latter (indicates removal of duplicates).

[fh331]

I'd find it unlikely that a ChIP library had 0% duplication. They are in general highly duplicated as you are sequencing a very limited set of input template.

Hi fanli

I agree with you. Since I have used 'bamtools stats' function to get a quick idea. I am assuming bamtools isn't very stringent in marking duplicates. If I use piccard markduplicates, I think there will be some level of duplication. I can put updated info about that tomorrow.

On the other hand, what level of duplication is normal?

[fh331]

@HESmith

bamtools stats -in /path/to/my/bam/self-aligned.bam

[fanli]

I'd find it unlikely that a ChIP library had 0% duplication. They are in general highly duplicated as you are sequencing a very limited set of input template.

[HESmith]

Question: how did you determine that your self-aligned reads did not contain any duplicates?

[fh331]

For starters, why don't you identify a few reads that are duplicated in the facility-generated BAM, then compare to the same reads in your self-generated BAM? If you have trouble interpreting the results, post the reads here so we can help.

Hi HESmith,
Thanks for the reply. Do you mean I should just extract some duplicated reads from the facility-generated bam and see if they're present in my self-generated bam? The number of reads is very similar between the bam.

My impression is that these extra tools used in the facility somehow flags reads as duplicates but when I decompress and realign it, I get rid of the flags somehow and hence there are no duplicates.