Provided by: bwa_0.7.17-7_amd64 bug

NAME

       bwa - Burrows-Wheeler Alignment Tool

SYNOPSIS

       bwa index ref.fa

       bwa mem ref.fa reads.fq > aln-se.sam

       bwa mem ref.fa read1.fq read2.fq > aln-pe.sam

       bwa aln ref.fa short_read.fq > aln_sa.sai

       bwa samse ref.fa aln_sa.sai short_read.fq > aln-se.sam

       bwa sampe ref.fa aln_sa1.sai aln_sa2.sai read1.fq read2.fq > aln-pe.sam

       bwa bwasw ref.fa long_read.fq > aln.sam

DESCRIPTION

       BWA  is  a  software package for mapping low-divergent sequences against a large reference
       genome, such as the human genome. It consists of three algorithms:  BWA-backtrack,  BWA-SW
       and  BWA-MEM.  The  first  algorithm  is designed for Illumina sequence reads up to 100bp,
       while the rest two for longer sequences ranged from 70bp to 1Mbp. BWA-MEM and BWA-SW share
       similar  features such as long-read support and split alignment, but BWA-MEM, which is the
       latest, is generally recommended for  high-quality  queries  as  it  is  faster  and  more
       accurate.   BWA-MEM  also  has better performance than BWA-backtrack for 70-100bp Illumina
       reads.

       For all the algorithms, BWA first needs to construct the FM-index for the reference genome
       (the  index  command).  Alignment  algorithms  are  invoked  with  different sub-commands:
       aln/samse/sampe for BWA-backtrack, bwasw for BWA-SW and mem for the BWA-MEM algorithm.

COMMANDS AND OPTIONS

       index  bwa index [-p prefix] [-a algoType] db.fa

              Index database sequences in the FASTA format.

              OPTIONS:

              -p STR    Prefix of the output database [same as db filename]

              -a STR    Algorithm for constructing BWT index. BWA implements three algorithms for
                        BWT  construction:  is,  bwtsw  and rb2.  The first algorithm is a little
                        faster for small database but requires large RAM and does  not  work  for
                        databases  with  total  length  longer  than 2GB. The second algorithm is
                        adapted from the BWT-SW source code. It in  theory  works  with  database
                        with  trillions  of  bases.  When  this  option  is  not  specified,  the
                        appropriate algorithm will be chosen automatically.

       mem    bwa mem [-aCHjMpP] [-t nThreads] [-k minSeedLen] [-w bandWidth] [-d  zDropoff]  [-r
              seedSplitRatio]  [-c  maxOcc] [-D chainShadow] [-m maxMateSW] [-W minSeedMatch] [-A
              matchScore]  [-B  mmPenalty]  [-O  gapOpenPen]  [-E  gapExtPen]  [-L  clipPen]  [-U
              unpairPen]  [-x  readType]  [-R  RGline]  [-H  HDlines] [-v verboseLevel] db.prefix
              reads.fq [mates.fq]

              Align 70bp-1Mbp query sequences with the BWA-MEM algorithm. Briefly, the  algorithm
              works  by  seeding  alignments with maximal exact matches (MEMs) and then extending
              seeds with the affine-gap Smith-Waterman algorithm (SW).

              If mates.fq file is absent and option -p is not set,  this  command  regards  input
              reads are single-end. If mates.fq is present, this command assumes the i-th read in
              reads.fq and the i-th read in mates.fq constitute a read pair. If -p is  used,  the
              command assumes the 2i-th and the (2i+1)-th read in reads.fq constitute a read pair
              (such input file is said to be interleaved). In this case, mates.fq is ignored.  In
              the paired-end mode, the mem command will infer the read orientation and the insert
              size distribution from a batch of reads.

              The BWA-MEM algorithm performs local alignment. It  may  produce  multiple  primary
              alignments  for  different  part of a query sequence. This is a crucial feature for
              long sequences. However, some tools such as Picard's markDuplicates does  not  work
              with split alignments. One may consider to use option -M to flag shorter split hits
              as secondary.

              ALGORITHM OPTIONS:

              -t INT    Number of threads [1]

              -k INT    Minimum seed length.  Matches  shorter  than  INT  will  be  missed.  The
                        alignment   speed   is  usually  insensitive  to  this  value  unless  it
                        significantly deviates from 20. [19]

              -w INT    Band width. Essentially, gaps longer than INT will  not  be  found.  Note
                        that  the  maximum  gap length is also affected by the scoring matrix and
                        the hit length, not solely determined by this option. [100]

              -d INT    Off-diagonal X-dropoff (Z-dropoff). Stop extension  when  the  difference
                        between  the  best  and the current extension score is above |i-j|*A+INT,
                        where i and j are the current  positions  of  the  query  and  reference,
                        respectively,  and  A  is  the  matching  score.  Z-dropoff is similar to
                        BLAST's X-dropoff except that it doesn't penalize  gaps  in  one  of  the
                        sequences  in  the  alignment.  Z-dropoff  not  only  avoids  unnecessary
                        extension, but also reduces poor alignments inside a long good alignment.
                        [100]

              -r FLOAT  Trigger re-seeding for a MEM longer than minSeedLen*FLOAT.  This is a key
                        heuristic parameter for tuning the performance. Larger value yields fewer
                        seeds, which leads to faster alignment speed but lower accuracy. [1.5]

              -c INT    Discard  a  MEM if it has more than INT occurrence in the genome. This is
                        an insensitive parameter. [500]

              -D FLOAT  Drop chains shorter than FLOAT fraction of the longest overlapping  chain
                        [0.5]

              -m INT    Perform at most INT rounds of mate-SW [50]

              -W INT    Drop  a  chain if the number of bases in seeds is smaller than INT.  This
                        option is primarily used for longer contigs/reads. When positive, it also
                        affects seed filtering. [0]

              -P        In the paired-end mode, perform SW to rescue missing hits only but do not
                        try to find hits that fit a proper pair.

              SCORING OPTIONS:

              -A INT    Matching score. [1]

              -B INT    Mismatch penalty. The  sequence  error  rate  is  approximately:  {.75  *
                        exp[-log(4) * B/A]}. [4]

              -O INT[,INT]
                        Gap  open penalty. If two numbers are specified, the first is the penalty
                        of opening a deletion and the second for opening an insertion. [6]

              -E INT[,INT]
                        Gap extension penalty. If two numbers are specified,  the  first  is  the
                        penalty  of extending a deletion and second for extending an insertion. A
                        gap of length k costs O + k*E (i.e.  -O  is  for  opening  a  zero-length
                        gap). [1]

              -L INT[,INT]
                        Clipping  penalty.  When  performing SW extension, BWA-MEM keeps track of
                        the best score reaching the end of query. If this score  is  larger  than
                        the  best  SW  score  minus  the  clipping  penalty, clipping will not be
                        applied. Note that in this case, the SAM  AS  tag  reports  the  best  SW
                        score;  clipping penalty is not deduced. If two numbers are provided, the
                        first is for 5'-end clipping and second for 3'-end clipping. [5]

              -U INT    Penalty for an unpaired read pair. BWA-MEM scores an unpaired  read  pair
                        as     scoreRead1+scoreRead2-INT     and     scores     a    paired    as
                        scoreRead1+scoreRead2-insertPenalty. It  compares  these  two  scores  to
                        determine  whether  we should force pairing. A larger value leads to more
                        aggressive read pair. [17]

              -x STR    Read type. Changes multiple parameters unless overridden [null]

                        pacbio:   -k17 -W40 -r10 -A1 -B1 -O1 -E1 -L0 (PacBio reads to ref)

                        ont2d:    -k14 -W20 -r10 -A1 -B1 -O1 -E1 -L0 (Oxford Nanopore 2D-reads to
                                  ref)

                        intractg: -B9 -O16 -L5 (intra-species contigs to ref)

              INPUT/OUTPUT OPTIONS:

              -p        Smart  pairing.  If  two  adjacent  reads  have  the  same name, they are
                        considered to form a read pair. This way, paired-end and single-end reads
                        can be mixed in a single FASTA/Q stream.

              -R STR    Complete  read  group  header  line.  '\t' can be used in STR and will be
                        converted to a TAB in the output SAM. The read group ID will be  attached
                        to every read in the output. An example is '@RG\tID:foo\tSM:bar'.  [null]

              -H ARG    If  ARG  starts  with  @, it is interpreted as a string and gets inserted
                        into the output SAM header; otherwise, ARG is interpreted as a file  with
                        all  lines  starting  with  @  in  the file inserted into the SAM header.
                        [null]

              -o FILE   Write the output SAM file to FILE.   For  compatibility  with  other  BWA
                        commands, this option may also be given as -f FILE.  [standard output]

              -q
                         Don't  reduce  the mapping quality of split alignment of lower alignment
                        score.

              -5        For split alignment, mark the segment with the smallest coordinate as the
                        primary. It automatically applies option -q as well. This option may help
                        some Hi-C pipelines. By default, BWA-MEM marks highest scoring segment as
                        primary.

              -K  INT   Process INT input bases in each batch regardless of the number of threads
                        in use [10000000*nThreads].  By default, the batch size  is  proportional
                        to  the  number  of  threads  in  use.   Because the inferred insert size
                        distribution slightly depends on the batch size, using  different  number
                        of  threads  may  produce different output.  Specifying this option helps
                        reproducibility.

              -T INT    Don't output alignment with score lower than INT.   This  option  affects
                        output and occasionally SAM flag 2. [30]

              -j        Treat  ALT  contigs  as  part  of  the  primary assembly (i.e. ignore the
                        db.prefix.alt file).

              -h INT[,INT2]
                        If a query has not more than INT hits with score higher than 80%  of  the
                        best  hit,  output them all in the XA tag.  If INT2 is specified, BWA-MEM
                        outputs up to INT2 hits if the list contains a  hit  to  an  ALT  contig.
                        [5,200]

              -a        Output  all found alignments for single-end or unpaired paired-end reads.
                        These alignments will be flagged as secondary alignments.

              -C        Append FASTA/Q comment to SAM output. This option can be used to transfer
                        read  meta  information  (e.g.  barcode) to the SAM output. Note that the
                        FASTA/Q comment (the string after  a  space  in  the  header  line)  must
                        conform  the  SAM  spec  (e.g.  BC:Z:CGTAC). Malformated comments lead to
                        incorrect SAM output.

              -Y        Use soft  clipping  CIGAR  operation  for  supplementary  alignments.  By
                        default,  BWA-MEM  uses  soft clipping for the primary alignment and hard
                        clipping for supplementary alignments.

              -M        Mark shorter split hits as secondary (for Picard compatibility).

              -v INT    Control the verbosity level of the output. This option has not been fully
                        supported throughout BWA. Ideally, a value 0 for disabling all the output
                        to stderr; 1 for outputting errors only; 2 for warnings and errors; 3 for
                        all  normal  messages;  4 or higher for debugging. When this option takes
                        value 4, the output is not SAM. [3]

              -I FLOAT[,FLOAT[,INT[,INT]]]
                        Specify the mean, standard deviation (10% of the mean if absent), max  (4
                        sigma  from the mean if absent) and min (4 sigma if absent) of the insert
                        size distribution. Only applicable to the  FR  orientation.  By  default,
                        BWA-MEM  infers  these  numbers  and  the  pair orientations given enough
                        reads. [inferred]

       aln    bwa aln [-n maxDiff] [-o maxGapO] [-e maxGapE] [-d  nDelTail]  [-i  nIndelEnd]  [-k
              maxSeedDiff]  [-l  seedLen]  [-t nThrds] [-cRN] [-M misMsc] [-O gapOsc] [-E gapEsc]
              [-q trimQual] <in.db.fasta> <in.query.fq> > <out.sai>

              Find the SA coordinates of the input reads.  Maximum  maxSeedDiff  differences  are
              allowed  in  the  first  seedLen  subsequence  and  maximum maxDiff differences are
              allowed in the whole sequence.

              OPTIONS:

              -n NUM    Maximum edit distance if the value is INT, or  the  fraction  of  missing
                        alignments given 2% uniform base error rate if FLOAT. In the latter case,
                        the maximum edit distance is  automatically  chosen  for  different  read
                        lengths. [0.04]

              -o INT    Maximum number of gap opens [1]

              -e INT    Maximum  number  of gap extensions, -1 for k-difference mode (disallowing
                        long gaps) [-1]

              -d INT    Disallow a long deletion within INT bp towards the 3'-end [16]

              -i INT    Disallow an indel within INT bp towards the ends [5]

              -l INT    Take the first INT subsequence as seed. If INT is larger than  the  query
                        sequence,  seeding  will  be  disabled.  For  long  reads, this option is
                        typically ranged from 25 to 35 for `-k 2'. [inf]

              -k INT    Maximum edit distance in the seed [2]

              -t INT    Number of threads (multi-threading mode) [1]

              -M INT    Mismatch penalty. BWA will not search for suboptimal hits  with  a  score
                        lower than (bestScore-misMsc). [3]

              -O INT    Gap open penalty [11]

              -E INT    Gap extension penalty [4]

              -R INT    Proceed  with suboptimal alignments if there are no more than INT equally
                        best hits. This option only affects paired-end mapping.  Increasing  this
                        threshold  helps  to  improve  the pairing accuracy at the cost of speed,
                        especially for short reads (~32bp).

              -c        Reverse query but not complement it, which is required for  alignment  in
                        the color space. (Disabled since 0.6.x)

              -N        Disable  iterative search. All hits with no more than maxDiff differences
                        will be found. This mode is much slower than the default.

              -q INT    Parameter   for   read   trimming.   BWA   trims   a   read    down    to
                        argmax_x{\sum_{i=x+1}^l(INT-q_i)} if q_l<INT where l is the original read
                        length. [0]

              -I        The input is in the Illumina 1.3+ read format (quality equals ASCII-64).

              -B INT    Length of barcode starting from the 5'-end. When  INT  is  positive,  the
                        barcode  of  each read will be trimmed before mapping and will be written
                        at the BC SAM tag. For paired-end reads, the barcode from both  ends  are
                        concatenated. [0]

              -b        Specify  the  input  read sequence file is the BAM format. For paired-end
                        data, two ends in a pair must be grouped together and options  -1  or  -2
                        are  usually  applied  to  specify  which  end  should be mapped. Typical
                        command lines for mapping pair-end data in the BAM format are:

                            bwa aln ref.fa -b1 reads.bam > 1.sai
                            bwa aln ref.fa -b2 reads.bam > 2.sai
                            bwa sampe ref.fa 1.sai 2.sai reads.bam reads.bam > aln.sam

              -0        When -b is specified, only use single-end reads in mapping.

              -1        When -b is specified, only use the first read in a read pair  in  mapping
                        (skip single-end reads and the second reads).

              -2        When -b is specified, only use the second read in a read pair in mapping.

       samse  bwa samse [-n maxOcc] <in.db.fasta> <in.sai> <in.fq> > <out.sam>

              Generate  alignments in the SAM format given single-end reads. Repetitive hits will
              be randomly chosen.

              OPTIONS:

              -n INT    Maximum number of alignments to output in the XA  tag  for  reads  paired
                        properly.  If  a  read  has  more  than  INT hits, the XA tag will not be
                        written. [3]

              -r STR    Specify the read group in a format like `@RG\tID:foo\tSM:bar'. [null]

       sampe  bwa sampe [-a  maxInsSize]  [-o  maxOcc]  [-n  maxHitPaired]  [-N  maxHitDis]  [-P]
              <in.db.fasta> <in1.sai> <in2.sai> <in1.fq> <in2.fq> > <out.sam>

              Generate alignments in the SAM format given paired-end reads. Repetitive read pairs
              will be placed randomly.

              OPTIONS:

              -a INT  Maximum insert size for a read pair to be considered being mapped properly.
                      Since  0.4.5,  this  option  is  only  used  when there are not enough good
                      alignment to infer the distribution of insert sizes. [500]

              -o INT  Maximum occurrences of a read for pairing. A  read  with  more  occurrneces
                      will  be treated as a single-end read. Reducing this parameter helps faster
                      pairing. [100000]

              -P      Load the entire FM-index into memory to reduce disk operations  (base-space
                      reads only). With this option, at least 1.25N bytes of memory are required,
                      where N is the length of the genome.

              -n INT  Maximum number of alignments to output in  the  XA  tag  for  reads  paired
                      properly. If a read has more than INT hits, the XA tag will not be written.
                      [3]

              -N INT  Maximum number of alignments to output in the XA tag for disconcordant read
                      pairs  (excluding singletons). If a read has more than INT hits, the XA tag
                      will not be written. [10]

              -r STR  Specify the read group in a format like `@RG\tID:foo\tSM:bar'. [null]

       bwasw  bwa bwasw [-a matchScore] [-b mmPen] [-q gapOpenPen] [-r gapExtPen]  [-t  nThreads]
              [-w  bandWidth]  [-T  thres]  [-s  hspIntv]  [-z zBest] [-N nHspRev] [-c thresCoef]
              <in.db.fasta> <in.fq> [mate.fq]

              Align query sequences in the in.fq file. When mate.fq is present,  perform  paired-
              end  alignment.  The  paired-end  mode  only  works for reads Illumina short-insert
              libraries. In the paired-end mode, BWA-SW may still  output  split  alignments  but
              they  are all marked as not properly paired; the mate positions will not be written
              if the mate has multiple local hits.

              OPTIONS:

              -a INT    Score of a match [1]

              -b INT    Mismatch penalty [3]

              -q INT    Gap open penalty [5]

              -r INT    Gap extension penalty. The penalty for a contiguous  gap  of  size  k  is
                        q+k*r. [2]

              -t INT    Number of threads in the multi-threading mode [1]

              -w INT    Band width in the banded alignment [33]

              -T INT    Minimum score threshold divided by a [37]

              -c FLOAT  Coefficient  for threshold adjustment according to query length. Given an
                        l-long  query,  the   threshold   for   a   hit   to   be   retained   is
                        a*max{T,c*log(l)}. [5.5]

              -z INT    Z-best heuristics. Higher -z increases accuracy at the cost of speed. [1]

              -s INT    Maximum  SA  interval  size  for  initiating  a seed. Higher -s increases
                        accuracy at the cost of speed. [3]

              -N INT    Minimum number of  seeds  supporting  the  resultant  alignment  to  skip
                        reverse alignment. [5]

SAM ALIGNMENT FORMAT

       The  output  of the `aln' command is binary and designed for BWA use only. BWA outputs the
       final alignment in the SAM (Sequence Alignment/Map) format. Each line consists of:

                ┌────┬───────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                │ColFieldDescription                        │
                ├────┼───────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
                │ 1  │ QNAME │ Query (pair) NAME                                        │
                │ 2  │ FLAG  │ bitwise FLAG                                             │
                │ 3  │ RNAME │ Reference sequence NAME                                  │
                │ 4  │ POS   │ 1-based leftmost POSition/coordinate of clipped sequence │
                │ 5  │ MAPQ  │ MAPping Quality (Phred-scaled)                           │
                │ 6  │ CIAGR │ extended CIGAR string                                    │
                │ 7  │ MRNM  │ Mate Reference sequence NaMe (`=' if same as RNAME)      │
                │ 8  │ MPOS  │ 1-based Mate POSistion                                   │
                │ 9  │ ISIZE │ Inferred insert SIZE                                     │
                │10  │ SEQ   │ query SEQuence on the same strand as the reference       │
                │11  │ QUAL  │ query QUALity (ASCII-33 gives the Phred base quality)    │
                │12  │ OPT   │ variable OPTional fields in the format TAG:VTYPE:VALUE   │
                └────┴───────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

       Each bit in the FLAG field is defined as:

                         ┌────┬────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┐
                         │ChrFlagDescription              │
                         ├────┼────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
                         │ p  │ 0x0001 │ the read is paired in sequencing      │
                         │ P  │ 0x0002 │ the read is mapped in a proper pair   │
                         │ u  │ 0x0004 │ the query sequence itself is unmapped │
                         │ U  │ 0x0008 │ the mate is unmapped                  │
                         │ r  │ 0x0010 │ strand of the query (1 for reverse)   │
                         │ R  │ 0x0020 │ strand of the mate                    │
                         │ 1  │ 0x0040 │ the read is the first read in a pair  │
                         │ 2  │ 0x0080 │ the read is the second read in a pair │
                         │ s  │ 0x0100 │ the alignment is not primary          │
                         │ f  │ 0x0200 │ QC failure                            │
                         │ d  │ 0x0400 │ optical or PCR duplicate              │
                         │ S  │ 0x0800 │ supplementary alignment               │
                         └────┴────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘

       The Please check <http://samtools.sourceforge.net> for the format  specification  and  the
       tools for post-processing the alignment.

       BWA generates the following optional fields. Tags starting with `X' are specific to BWA.

                        ┌────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                        │TagMeaning                      │
                        ├────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
                        │NM  │ Edit distance                                    │
                        │MD  │ Mismatching positions/bases                      │
                        │AS  │ Alignment score                                  │
                        │BC  │ Barcode sequence                                 │
                        │SA  │ Supplementary alignments                         │
                        ├────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
                        │X0  │ Number of best hits                              │
                        │X1  │ Number of suboptimal hits found by BWA           │
                        │XN  │ Number of ambiguous bases in the referenece      │
                        │XM  │ Number of mismatches in the alignment            │
                        │XO  │ Number of gap opens                              │
                        │XG  │ Number of gap extensions                         │
                        │XT  │ Type: Unique/Repeat/N/Mate-sw                    │
                        │XA  │ Alternative hits; format: /(chr,pos,CIGAR,NM;)*/ │
                        ├────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
                        │XS  │ Suboptimal alignment score                       │
                        │XF  │ Support from forward/reverse alignment           │
                        │XE  │ Number of supporting seeds                       │
                        └────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

       Note  that  XO and XG are generated by BWT search while the CIGAR string by Smith-Waterman
       alignment. These two tags may be inconsistent with the CIGAR string. This is not a bug.

NOTES ON SHORT-READ ALIGNMENT

   Alignment Accuracy
       When seeding is disabled, BWA guarantees to find an alignment containing  maximum  maxDiff
       differences  including  maxGapO  gap  opens which do not occur within nIndelEnd bp towards
       either end of the query. Longer gaps may be found if maxGapE is positive, but  it  is  not
       guaranteed  to find all hits. When seeding is enabled, BWA further requires that the first
       seedLen subsequence contains no more than maxSeedDiff differences.

       When gapped alignment is disabled, BWA is expected to generate the same alignment as Eland
       version  1,  the  Illumina  alignment  program. However, as BWA change `N' in the database
       sequence to random nucleotides, hits to these random sequences will also be counted. As  a
       consequence,  BWA  may mark a unique hit as a repeat, if the random sequences happen to be
       identical to the sequences which should be unqiue in the database.

       By default, if the best hit is not highly repetitive (controlled by -R),  BWA  also  finds
       all hits contains one more mismatch; otherwise, BWA finds all equally best hits only. Base
       quality is NOT considered in evaluating hits. In the paired-end mode, BWA pairs  all  hits
       it  found. It further performs Smith-Waterman alignment for unmapped reads to rescue reads
       with a high erro rate, and for high-quality anomalous pairs  to  fix  potential  alignment
       errors.

   Estimating Insert Size Distribution
       BWA  estimates  the  insert  size  distribution per 256*1024 read pairs. It first collects
       pairs of reads with both ends mapped with a single-end  quality  20  or  higher  and  then
       calculates  median  (Q2), lower and higher quartile (Q1 and Q3). It estimates the mean and
       the variance of the insert size distribution from pairs  whose  insert  sizes  are  within
       interval  [Q1-2(Q3-Q1),  Q3+2(Q3-Q1)].  The maximum distance x for a pair considered to be
       properly paired (SAM flag 0x2) is calculated by solving equation Phi((x-mu)/sigma)=x/L*p0,
       where  mu  is  the mean, sigma is the standard error of the insert size distribution, L is
       the length of the genome, p0 is  prior  of  anomalous  pair  and  Phi()  is  the  standard
       cumulative  distribution  function.  For  mapping Illumina short-insert reads to the human
       genome, x is about 6-7 sigma away from the mean. Quartiles, mean, variance and x  will  be
       printed to the standard error output.

   Memory Requirement
       With  bwtsw  algorithm,  5GB  memory  is  required  for indexing the complete human genome
       sequences. For short reads, the aln command uses ~3.2GB memory and the sampe command  uses
       ~5.4GB.

   Speed
       Indexing  the  human genome sequences takes 3 hours with bwtsw algorithm. Indexing smaller
       genomes with IS algorithms is faster, but requires more memory.

       The speed of alignment is largely determined by the error rate of the query sequences (r).
       Firstly,  BWA  runs much faster for near perfect hits than for hits with many differences,
       and it stops searching for a hit with l+2 differences if a l-difference hit is found. This
       means  BWA  will be very slow if r is high because in this case BWA has to visit hits with
       many differences and  looking  for  these  hits  is  expensive.  Secondly,  the  alignment
       algorithm behind makes the speed sensitive to [k log(N)/m], where k is the maximum allowed
       differences, N the size of database and m the length of a query. In practice, we choose  k
       w.r.t.  r  and therefore r is the leading factor. I would not recommend to use BWA on data
       with r>0.02.

       Pairing is slower for shorter reads. This  is  mainly  because  shorter  reads  have  more
       spurious hits and converting SA coordinates to chromosomal coordinates are very costly.

CHANGES IN BWA-0.6

       Since  version  0.6,  BWA  has  been able to work with a reference genome longer than 4GB.
       This feature makes it possible to integrate the forward and reverse complemented genome in
       one  FM-index,  which  speeds  up  both BWA-short and BWA-SW. As a tradeoff, BWA uses more
       memory because it has to keep all positions and ranks in  64-bit  integers,  twice  larger
       than 32-bit integers used in the previous versions.

       The latest BWA-SW also works for paired-end reads longer than 100bp. In comparison to BWA-
       short, BWA-SW tends to be more accurate  for  highly  unique  reads  and  more  robust  to
       relative  long  INDELs and structural variants.  Nonetheless, BWA-short usually has higher
       power to distinguish the optimal hit from many suboptimal hits. The choice of the  mapping
       algorithm may depend on the application.

SEE ALSO

       BWA        website        <http://bio-bwa.sourceforge.net>,        Samtools        website
       <http://samtools.sourceforge.net>

AUTHOR

       Heng Li at the Sanger Institute wrote the key source codes and  integrated  the  following
       codes  for  BWT  construction:  bwtsw <http://i.cs.hku.hk/~ckwong3/bwtsw/>, implemented by
       Chi-Kwong     Wong     at     the     University     of     Hong     Kong      and      IS
       <http://yuta.256.googlepages.com/sais>      originally     proposed     by     Nong     Ge
       <http://www.cs.sysu.edu.cn/nong/> at the Sun Yat-Sen University and  implemented  by  Yuta
       Mori.

LICENSE AND CITATION

       The  full BWA package is distributed under GPLv3 as it uses source codes from BWT-SW which
       is covered by GPL. Sorting, hash table, BWT and IS libraries are distributed under the MIT
       license.

       If you use the BWA-backtrack algorithm, please cite the following paper:

       Li  H.  and  Durbin  R. (2009) Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows-Wheeler
       transform. Bioinformatics, 25, 1754-1760. [PMID: 19451168]

       If you use the BWA-SW algorithm, please cite:

       Li H. and Durbin R. (2010) Fast and  accurate  long-read  alignment  with  Burrows-Wheeler
       transform. Bioinformatics, 26, 589-595. [PMID: 20080505]

       If you use BWA-MEM or the fastmap component of BWA, please cite:

       Li  H.  (2013) Aligning sequence reads, clone sequences and assembly contigs with BWA-MEM.
       arXiv:1303.3997v1 [q-bio.GN].

       It is likely that the BWA-MEM manuscript will not appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

HISTORY

       BWA is largely influenced by BWT-SW. It uses source  codes  from  BWT-SW  and  mimics  its
       binary  file formats; BWA-SW resembles BWT-SW in several ways. The initial idea about BWT-
       based alignment also came from the group who developed BWT-SW. At the same  time,  BWA  is
       different  enough  from  BWT-SW. The short-read alignment algorithm bears no similarity to
       Smith-Waterman algorithm  any  more.  While  BWA-SW  learns  from  BWT-SW,  it  introduces
       heuristics  that  can  hardly  be  applied to the original algorithm. In all, BWA does not
       guarantee to find all local hits as what BWT-SW is designed to do, but it is  much  faster
       than BWT-SW on both short and long query sequences.

       I  started  to  write  the  first piece of codes on 24 May 2008 and got the initial stable
       version on 02 June 2008. During this period, I was acquainted that Professor Tak-Wah  Lam,
       the  first  author  of  BWT-SW paper, was collaborating with Beijing Genomics Institute on
       SOAP2, the successor to SOAP (Short Oligonucleotide Analysis Package). SOAP2 has come  out
       in  November  2008.  According to the SourceForge download page, the third BWT-based short
       read aligner, bowtie, was first released in August 2008.  At  the  time  of  writing  this
       manual, at least three more BWT-based short-read aligners are being implemented.

       The  BWA-SW  algorithm  is  a  new component of BWA. It was conceived in November 2008 and
       implemented ten months later.

       The BWA-MEM algorithm is  based  on  an  algorithm  finding  super-maximal  exact  matches
       (SMEMs),  which  was  first  published  with  the  fermi  assembler paper in 2012. I first
       implemented the basic SMEM algorithm in the fastmap command for  an  experiment  and  then
       extended the basic algorithm and added the extension part in Feburary 2013 to make BWA-MEM
       a fully featured mapper.