Can Illumina reads be mapped to a different species ?

[emorin]

Hello,

I'm working on fungi genomes and I was wondering if I could map Illumina reads from one species (A) to gene models from an other one (B)?
I have tried with maq with -n (Number of maximum mismatches) set to 9 for 63 bp reads and only 50 000 reads on 25 millions mapped to the gene models. I know that I have to consider mapping in non coding regions but still the number is very low.
Am I trying to do something dummy ?

The goal is to try to generate a set of gene models for A from B. While waiting for the genome assembly.

Thanks,

Emmanuelle

[doc.ramses]

I think it's worth a try. What about not mapping against the whole genome but only the conserved regions ? Don't know if this is a good idea or if you have the needed data for this. It's just a lucky guess, but maybe I can point you to the right direction.

[colindaven]

9 bp seems like a lot of error in a 63 bp read. Do you know how divergent the two genesets are ? Have you tried Blastn to test the divergence ?
How about BLASTn for 1000 reads to geneset B ?

Another approach might be to try de novo assembly of the reads, for example with Velvet, and then map them to geneset B.

[emorin]

Hello,

Thanks for the answers.
A liltle bit more information about my data, they belong to 2 fungi of the same genus so pretty close.

To answer Doc ramses, I try to map to gene models that should be conserved enough. What do you mean by conserved regions ?

To colindaven, I agree with you about 9 being a lot, that why I posted my question. Apparently we assumed the 2 genesets are 15% divergent at the amino acid level. The assembly step before the mapping could be an idea.

I will proceed blastn analysis and let you know.

Thanks,

Emmanuelle

[krobison]

From the category Comparative Genomics in the Software Wiki:

LAST "Furthermore, when mapping Drosophila melanogaster reads to the Drosophila simulans genome, it increased the amount of correctly mapped reads from 49 to 66%"

DIAL "A computational pipeline for identifying single-base substitutions between two closely related genomes without the help of a reference genome."


I have not used either one.