The chloroplast genome hidden in plain sight, open access publishing and anti-fragile distributed data sources

We sequenced several cannabis genomes in 2011 of June and the first and the longest contigs to emerge were the chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes. Having been a contributor to the Human Genome Project and an eye-witness to the real benefits of immediate data release, I have first hand experience with the potential mal-investment of millions of dollars of tax payer money narrowly averted due to the adopted global rapid data release policy. The policy was vital in reducing duplication of effort and economic waste. As a result, we felt obligated to publish the Cannabis genome data in a similar spirit and placed them immediately on a cloud based Amazon server in August of 2011. While these rapid data release practices were heralded by many in the media, we still find some authors fail to find or reference said work and hope to compel the readership that this omission has more pervasive repercussions than bruised egos and is a regression for our community.

Sequence and structural variation in a human genome uncovered by short-read, massively parallel ligation sequencing using two-base encoding

We describe the genome sequencing of an anonymous individual of African origin using a novel ligation-based sequencing assay that enables a unique form of error correction that improves the raw accuracy of the aligned reads to >99.9%, allowing us to accurately call SNPs with as few as two reads per allele. We collected several billion mate-paired reads yielding approximately 18x haploid coverage of aligned sequence and close to 300x clone coverage. Over 98% of the reference genome is covered with at least one uniquely placed read, and 99.65% is spanned by at least one uniquely placed mate-paired clone. We identify over 3.8 million SNPs, 19% of which are novel. Mate-paired data are used to physically resolve haplotype phases of nearly two-thirds of the genotypes obtained and produce phased segments of up to 215 kb. We detect 226,529 intra-read indels, 5590 indels between mate-paired reads, 91 inversions, and four gene fusions. We use a novel approach for detecting indels between mate-paired reads that are smaller than the standard deviation of the insert size of the library and discover deletions in common with those detected with our intra-read approach. Dozens of mutations previously described in OMIM and hundreds of nonsynonymous single-nucleotide and structural variants in genes previously implicated in disease are identified in this individual. There is more genetic variation in the human genome still to be uncovered, and we provide guidance for future surveys in populations and cancer biopsies.