Multiple Sequence Alignments

This page is entirely dedicated to performing Multiple Sequence Alignments (MSA) with PanTools.

MSA

Performs multiple sequence alignments with MAFFT on sets of sequences. These alignments can either be:

  • per homology group

  • multiple homology groups

  • regions

  • with all sequences containing a functional domain

The alignment consists of two rounds: After the initial alignment, protein sequences are trimmed based on the longest start and end gap of the alignment. The number of trimmed amino acids is multiplied by three to trim the correct number of nucleotides. If only nucleotide sequences are aligned, the nucleotide sequence alignment is used for trimming. The trimmed sequences are aligned a second time to identify variable and parsimony informative sites. For each round, a ML phylogeny will be created with FastTree.

Select a method
By default, this function will make a MSA per homology group. (It can still be specified with --method=per-group.) Using another option from the list above requires use of the --method argument. For aligning multiple homology groups, please use --method=multiple-groups with the homology groups specified in a csv file on a single line (can be added with --homology-file=/path/to/hm.csv or --homology-groups=2,3,4,4). For aligning regions, please use --method=regions with a regions file that is added with --regions-file=/path/to/rf.txt. For aligning sequences based on a functional domain, please use --method=functions together with a functional domain that is added with --functions=<domain>.
Other options
In case you are only interested in the alignment of the nucleotide or protein sequences, use --mode=nucleotide or --mode=protein. When the --no-trimming argument is included, the variable and parsimony informative sites are identified from the initial alignment and no trimming is performed (thus, only one round of aligning). The option --no-fasttree can be used to skip running FastTree, which is used for generating a tree from the alignment.
Identify phenotype shared or specific variation
Shared SNPs or amino acid substitutions can be found among the members of a phenotype when --phenotype=<phenotype> is included. As homology groups can highly differ in size, the threshold for a phenotype shared or specific SNP/substitution is based on the number of sequences (from a certain phenotype) of an homology group instead of the number of genomes in the pangenome. For example, the pangenome holds 500 genomes but the homology group consists of only 100 sequences. The threshold can be lowered by including --phenotype-threshold=<phenotypeThreshold>, which lowers the original threshold by multiplying it to a given percentage.
Sequence identity and similarity
- The percentage identity of two sequences is calculated based on the number of exactly matching characters divided by the alignment length minus the positions were both sequences have a gap.
- The similarity (protein only) is calculated from the number of identical matches, increased by the number of similar amino acids (according to the BLOSUM 62 matrix), divided by the alignment length minus the shared gap positions. The calculated percentage of similarity is dependant on the BLOSUM matrix set by --blosum. Choose a larger BLOSUM number BLOSUM less divergent sequences.

Required software

Parameters

<databaseDirectory>

Path to the database root directory.

Options

--threads/-t

Number of threads for MAFFT and IQ-tree, default is the number of cores or 8, whichever is lower.

--include/-i

Only include a selection of genomes.

--exclude/-e

Exclude a selection of genomes.

--homology-file/-H

A text file with homology group node identifiers, separated by a comma. Default is all homology groups. (Mutually exclusive with --homology-groups.)

--homology-groups/-G

A comma separated list of homology group node identifiers. Default is all homology groups. (Mutually exclusive with --homology-file.)

--regions-file/-R

A text file containing genome locations with on each line: a genome number, sequence number, begin and end position, separated by a space.

--method

The kind of alignment to make. Can be either per-group, multiple-groups, regions or functions.

--mode/-m

Choose to only align nucleotide or protein sequences (default is both).

--functions

For specifying one or multiple functional domains (Only used when --method=functions).

--phenotype/-p

A phenotype name, used to identify phenotype specific SNPs/substitutions.

--blosum

A BLOSUM matrix number to control MAFFT’s sensitivity and the similarity calculation. Allowed values are 45, 62 and 80 (default: 62).

--phenotype-threshold

Threshold for phenotype specific SNPs (default: 100%).

--[no-]trimming

Align the sequences only once. Trimming is on by default.

--[no-]fasttree

Run FastTree (default: true).

--variants

Use variation (default: false).

Example regions file

Each line must have a genome number, sequence number, begin and end positions that are separated by a space. Place a minus symbol behind a region to extract the reverse complement sequence.

1 1 1 10000
195 1 477722 478426
71 10 17346 18056 -
138 47 159593 160300 -

Example commands

$ pantools msa tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --mode=protein -H=hmgroups.txt tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --no-trimming --mode=nucleotide -H=hmgroups.txt tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --phenotype=resistance --phenotype-threshold=99 -H=hmgroups.txt tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --method=multiple-groups tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --method=multiple-groups --mode=protein -H=hmgroups.txt tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --method=multiple-groups --phenotype=resistance --phenotype-threshold=95 -H=hmgroups.txt tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --method=regions -R=regions.txt tomato_DB
$ pantools msa --method=functions --functions=PF10137 tomato_DB

Output files

Output files are stored in database_directory/alignments/msa_/grouping_v?/ A separate directory is created for each alignment which holds the input and output files.

The ‘input’ directory contains the input files for the alignments.

  • nuc/prot(_trimmed).fasta, original and trimmed input sequences.

  • trimmed.info, number of trimmed positions per sequence.

  • sequences.info, relevant gene information of sequences in group: gene names, mRNA node id, address, strand orientation.

The alignments and output files are written to the ‘output’ directory.

  • nuc/prot(_trimmed).afa, the initial and second (trimmed) alignment in CLUSTAL format.

  • nuc/prot(_trimmed).fasta, the initial and second (trimmed) alignment in FASTA format.

  • nuc/prot(_trimmed).newick, FastTree ML tree inferred from the initial and second (trimmed) alignment.

  • nuc/prot(_trimmed)_alignment.info, some statistics about the initial and second (trimmed) alignment: alignment length, number of conserved, variable and parsimony informative sites

Sequence identity and similarity output files.

  • nuc/prot(_trimmed)_identity.csv, table with the sequence identity scores.

  • prot(_trimmed)_similarity.csv, table with similarity of the protein sequences.

Variable and parsimony informative sites output files.

  • informative_nuc/prot(_trimmed)_distance.csv, table with distances between sequences based on parsimony informative sites in the alignment.

  • variable_nuc/prot(_trimmed)_distance.csv, table with distances between sequences based on variable sites in the alignment.

  • informative_nuc/prot(_trimmed)_sites.csv, table with the number shared parsimony informative sites between sequences.

  • variable_nuc/prot(_trimmed)_sites.csv, table with the number of shared variable sites between sequences.

When a --phenotype is included.

  • phenotype_specific_changes_nuc/prot_groups.csv, the node identifiers of homology groups with phenotype specific substitutions.

  • phenotype_specific_changes_nuc/prot.txt, the positions of phenotype specific substitutions in the alignments.

  • phenotype_disrupted_nuc/prot.txt, shows how many sequences of different phenotypes prevented a SNP/substitution from becoming phenotype specific.