mummer plot unable to parse alignment file

[powoods]

Hello,

I am currently trying to make a dotplot in order to compare the sequence similarity between a reference genome and an early stage reference genome that my own lab is constructing. The software I am using to do this is called "mummer".

To get an initial feel for how the mummer software works, I aligned one chromosome of the reference genome to itself since this should in theory produce a perfect diagonal line.

The code I used for this was:
mummer Chromosome1.fasta Chromosome1.fasta > Chromosome1.mums

Then to create a dotplot of this alignment file I used the following code:
mummerplot -postscript -p OUTPUT_plot Chromosome1.mums

This code created the perfectly diagonal line dot plot as predicted.

My issue is that when I try to use the same code to align two different sequences, mummerplot is not able to parse the alignment file.

Here is the code I am using:
mummer Chromosome1.fasta Scaffold1.fasta >Chrom1_v_Scaff1.mums
mummerplot -postscript -p OUTPUT_plot Chrom1_v_Scaff1.mums

The following error appears every time I align two different sequences and try to plot the alignment:
gnuplot 5.2 patchlevel 7
Reading mummer file Chrom1_v_Scaff1.mums (use mummer -c)
ERROR: Could not parse Chrom1_v_Scaff1.mums
26869245 25 82

I have tried all the other alignment programs in mummer including "-mum", "-maxmatch" and "-nucmer" and they all give the same error.

I would really appreciate a solution to this issue if anyone has one, thank you.

[jdavik]

mummrplot

Hi,
did you ever figure out a solution here? I'm running into the same issue.