1. Introduction

SOAP3 is a GPU-based software for aligning short reads to a reference sequence. It can find all alignments with k mismatches, where k is chosen from 0 to 4. When compared with its previous version SOAP2, SOAP3 can be up to tens of times faster. For example, when aligning length-100 reads with the human genome, SOAP3 is the first software that can find all 4-mismatch alignments in tens of seconds per million reads.

The alignment program in this package is optimized to work for multi-millions of short reads each time by running a multi-core CPU and the GPU concurrently.

To exploit the parallelism of the GPU effectively, SOAP3 is using an adapted version of the 2BWT index of SOAP2 (the new index is called the GPU-2BWT). The index and alignment algorithms were developed by the algorithms research group of the University of Hong Kong (T.W. Lam, C.M. Liu, Thomas Wong, Edward Wu and S.M. Yiu), in collaboration with BGI (Beijing Genome Institute).

Old versions of Soap3: version 91 [April 2011, maintained by BGI], version 112 [July 2011, maintained by NIH].

2. Hardware and Platform

To run SOAP3, you need a linux workstation equipped with

• a multi-core CPU with at least 20GB main memory (default quad-core) * and
• a CUDA-enabled GPU with compute capability 2.0 and at least 3GB memory (default 6GB) * .

SOAP3 has been tested with the following GPU: NVIDIA Tesla C2070 (6GB memory), Tesla M2050 (3GB memory), GTX 580 (3GB memory). And it should also work using Tesla C2050, C2075, Quadro 6000.

SOAP3 was developed under the 64-bit linux platform and the CUDA Driver version 3.2. SOAP3 can also run with CUDA Driver version 4.1 (users are advised to remove the Virtual Memory limit using the command "ulimit -v unlimited").

* See Section 4 for how to change the default with the INI file soap3_aligner.ini.

3. Usage

SOAP3 consists of 3 parts: (i) Index (2BWT and GPU-2BWT) builder; (ii) Aligner; (iii) Output viewer.

After downloading the compressed file, run the following commands to extract the different programs:

You should get ten files:

soap3-builder, soap3-builder.ini, BGS-Build, soap3_aligner, soap3_aligner.ini, BGS-View, BGS-View-PE, make_view_binary.sh, make_view_sam.sh make_view_simple.sh

3.1 Index builder

Soap3-builder preprocesses the FASTA reference sequence(s) given in a file [ref sequence file] to produce a few indexes for alignment. The indexes will be stored in files whose names are in the form [ref sequence file].index. Note the following restrictions to the reference sequences:

• At most 256 reference sequences (chromosomes) in one single FASTA file.
• The total length of all reference sequences is at most 4 billion.
• All invalid characters (i.e., anything other than A, C, G, T) will be replaced by character G; regions that contain more than 10 invalid characters will not be involved in any alignment.

Step 1: Build the 2BWT index.

Syntax:

For example:

Step 2: Convert the 2BWT index to the GPU2-BWT index.

Syntax:

For example:

Additional files with the filename-prefix "[ref sequence file].index" will be generated.

With all these index files, you are now ready to use soap3_aligner to perform alignment for the reads.

3.2 Aligner

The aligner supports query files in FASTA format or FASTQ format. It will detect the format automatically.

For paired-end reads: Input reads from two files [query file 1] and [query file 2].

Syntax:

Example: Assume query files query1.fa and query2.fa, and insert size range [200, 500].

See Section 3.3 about the details of output format.

For single-end reads: Input reads from one file [query file 1].

Syntax:

Example 1: The query file query.fa contains a set of length-100 single reads, aligned with default options (up to 3 mismatches). A best alignment is reported for each read (break tie randomly).

Example 2: Suppose that the maximum number of mismatches allowed is 4, and all valid alignments are needed.

3.3 About the output

In the "default" setting:

• soap3_aligner divides the reads among 3 threads. Each thread outputs the alignment results in a separate file; the files are named [query file 1].gout.1, [query file 1].gout.2, and [query file 1].gout.3, etc.
• Each alignment is reported in simple plain text format with 5 fields: Read #, Chromosome Id#, Offset, Strand, # of Mismatch.

One can use the option -b 2 to output in SAM format, and -b 1 in binary format (the latter is for efficiency and requires a viewer; see Section 3.3.2 below).

3.3.1 Merging alignment results in simple plain format (default) into one file [query file1].out.

The program make_view_simple.sh merges all (default 3) output files [query file 1].gout.1, [query file 1].gout.2, and [query file 1].gout.3 into one file [query file1].out.

Syntax (for both single-end and paired-end input):

For example:

3.3.2 Merging alignment results in SAM format into one file [query file 1].out

If the SAM format is chosen, then soap3_aligner outputs the results in the SAM format into 3 (default) files. The program make_view_sam.sh merges all output files into one.

Syntax (for both single-end and paired-end input):

3.3.3 Alignment results in binary format (for efficiency when outputting large number of alignments)

If the binary output option is chosen, soap3_aligner outputs in binary format, which is not readable. The program make_view_binary.sh converts the binary format into plain text format and merges all the output files into one, namely, [query file 1].out

Syntax - singe-end reads:

Syntax - paired-end read alignment:

No matter it is the single-end or paired-end setting, the result are stored in a singe file [query file 1].out.

4. Fine tuning via configuration file soap3_aligner.ini

NumOfCpuThreads (default 3):

By default soap3_aligner assumes a quad-core CPU and uses three CPU threads for output purpose. The file "soap3_aligner.ini" contains a parameter "NumOfCpuThreads" with default value 3. If the CPU has x > 1 core, the number 3 should be changed to x -1.

GPUMemory (default 6):

If a GPU with less 6GB memory is used, one can modify the value of the parameter "GPUMemory" from 6 to 3, 4 or 5 accordingly.

StrandArrangement (default +/-):

For paired-end read alignment, by default, soap3_aligner only considers +/- as the proper strands of a paired-end alignment (i.e. forward strand for the alignment in left and reverse strand for the alignment in right). One can set the parameter "StrandArrangement" to "+/+" or "-/-".

MaxOutputPerRead and MaxOutputPerPair (default 1000):

These two parameters are used in the all-valid-alignment mode to limit the number of alignments per read or per pairs. MaxOutputPerRead is for single-end data, and MaxOutputPair is for MaxOutputPerPair. If these parameters are set to a huge value (say, 100K), it is recommended to output in binary format to save time.

5. Performance & Reference

Below is the performance of SOAP3 (version 135) when running on GTX 580 (3.2 GB RAM) to align length-100 reads to the human genome with 4 mismatches allowed.

• Human reference genome: 37.1
• Read data: Sequence read archive (SRA) accession #: SRR211279: volume 25 M (x 2), read length 100, average insert size 300, SD 30
• Index loading time: 134 seconds; use option -m 4 to align with up to 4 mismatches.

4 mismatches (-m 4)	Single-end reads			Paired-end reads
	Read loading time per M reads	+	Alignment time per M reads	Read loading time per M pairs	+	Alignment time per M pairs
Random best alignment
default plain text	~2 sec	+	~5 sec	~4 sec	+	~20 sec
ALL valid alignments (default at most 1000)
default plain text	~2 sec	+	~35 sec	~4 sec	+	~77 sec
binary format (-b 0)	~2 sec	+	~35 sec	~4 sec	+	~74 sec
ALL valid alignments (unlimited)
default plain text	~2 sec	+	~62 sec	~4 sec	+	~84 sec
binary format (-b 0)	~2 sec	+	~38 sec	~4 sec	+	~75 sec

6. Remark

SAM-tools v0.1.18 is included in SOAP3-GPU package to facilitate outputting alignment result into SAM output format. We have slightly modified the original code of SAM-tools to make it compilable under g++. Please see http://samtools.sourceforge.net/ for details of this package.

Reference:

SOAP3: Ultra-fast GPU-based parallel alignment tool for short reads. Bioinformatics, 2012.

Contact:

BGI and HKU Algorithm group

7. Copyright

Copyright © 2011, Computer Science Department, The University of Hong Kong

SOAP3 is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

SOAP3 is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.