CONCOCT’s documentation¶

Dependencies¶

python v2.7.*
gcc
gsl

apt-get install build-essential libgsl0-dev

cython>=0.19.2
numpy>=1.7.1
scipy>=0.12.0
pandas>=0.11.0
biopython>=1.62b
scikit-learn>=0.13.1

Installation¶

Here we describe two recommended ways of getting concoct to run on your computer/server. The first option, using Anaconda, should work for any *nix (e.g. Mac OS X or Linux) system even where you do not have ‘sudo’ rights (e.g. on a common computer cluster). The second option is suitable for a linux computer where you have root privileges and you prefer to use a virtual machine where all dependencies to run concoct are included. Docker does also run on Mac OS X through a virtual machine. For more information check out the Docker documentation.

conda create -n concoct_env python=2.7.6

source activate concoct_env

conda install cython numpy scipy biopython pandas pip scikit-learn

python setup.py install

sudo docker run -v /home/USER/Data:/opt/Data -i -t binpro/concoct_latest bash

$ cd /opt/CONCOCT_latest
$ nosetests

Required software¶

To run the entire example you need to install all dependencies as stated in the README dependencies. This includes all the optional dependencies. You can also look at doc/Dockerfile to help you install these packages on your server.

Another way to get everything set up is to use our full Docker image (binpro/concoct_latest) as suggested in the README docker.

It is not required to run all steps. The output files for each step are in the test data repository. At the end of this example the results should be the same as the results in the corresponding test data repository: https://github.com/BinPro/CONCOCT-test-data/releases. The version numbers listed above are the ones used to generate the results in that repository. Using newer versions will probably not be a problem, but your results may be different in that case.

Downloading test data¶

First download the test data repository of CONCOCT corresponding to the version of CONCOCT, that you have installed. The test data repository can be downloaded here. Then extract it in a suitable location.

If you are running the current unstable master branch of concoct, you need to clone the latest version of the test-data-repository as well.

Setting up the test environment¶

mkdir -p /HOST/path/to/Data
mkdir /HOST/path/to/Data/CONCOCT-complete-example

# Move the test data you extracted in the download part into the Data folder
mv /HOST/extracted/test/data/CONCOCT-test-data /HOST/path/to/Data/CONCOCT-test-data

sudo docker run -v /HOST/path/to/Data:/opt/Data/ -i -t binpro/concoct_latest bash

CONCOCT=/opt/CONCOCT_latest
CONCOCT_TEST=/opt/Data/CONCOCT-test-data
CONCOCT_EXAMPLE=/opt/Data/CONCOCT-complete-example

mkdir CONCOCT-complete-example
cd CONCOCT-complete-example

CONCOCT=/home/username/src/CONCOCT
CONCOCT_TEST=/home/username/src/CONCOCT-test-data
CONCOCT_EXAMPLE=/home/username/CONCOCT-complete-example

Assembling Metagenomic Reads¶

The first step in the analysis is to assemble all reads into contigs, here we use the software Velvet for this. This step can be computationaly intensive but for this small data set comprising a synthetic community of four species and 16 samples (100,000 reads per sample) it can be performed in a few minutes. If you do not wish to execute this step, the resulting contigs are already in the test data repository, and you can copy them from there insted. The commands for running Velvet are:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
cat $CONCOCT_TEST/reads/Sample*_R1.fa > All_R1.fa
cat $CONCOCT_TEST/reads/Sample*_R2.fa > All_R2.fa
velveth velveth_k71 71 -fasta -shortPaired -separate All_R1.fa All_R2.fa
velvetg velveth_k71 -ins_length 400 -exp_cov auto -cov_cutoff auto

After the assembly is finished create a directory with the resulting contigs and copy the result of Velvet there (this output is also in $CONCOCT_TEST/contigs):

mkdir contigs
cp velveth_k71/contigs.fa contigs/velvet_71.fa
rm All_R1.fa
rm All_R2.fa

Cutting up contigs¶

In order to give more weight to larger contigs and mitigate the effect of assembly errors we cut up the contigs into chunks of 10 Kb. The final chunk is appended to the one before it if it is < 10 Kb to prevent generating small contigs. This means that no contig < 20 Kb is cut up. We use the script cut_up_fasta.py for this:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
python $CONCOCT/scripts/cut_up_fasta.py -c 10000 -o 0 -m contigs/velvet_71.fa > contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa

Map the Reads onto the Contigs¶

After assembly we map the reads of each sample back to the assembly using bowtie2 and remove PCR duplicates with MarkDuplicates. The coverage histogram for each bam file is computed with BEDTools genomeCoverageBed. The script that calls these programs is provided with CONCOCT.

If you are not using the Docker image, then one does need to set an environment variable with the full path to the MarkDuplicates jar file. $MRKDUP which should point to the MarkDuplicates jar file e.g.

#NOTE not necessary if using the Docker image
export MRKDUP=/home/username/src/picard-tools-1.77/MarkDuplicates.jar

It is typically located within your picard-tools installation.

The following command is to be executed in the $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE dir you created in the previous part. First create the index on the assembly for bowtie2:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
bowtie2-build contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa

Then run this for loop, which for each sample creates a folder and runs map-bowtie2-markduplicates.sh:

for f in $CONCOCT_TEST/reads/*_R1.fa; do
    mkdir -p map/$(basename $f);
    cd map/$(basename $f);
    bash $CONCOCT/scripts/map-bowtie2-markduplicates.sh -ct 1 -p '-f' $f $(echo $f | sed s/R1/R2/) pair $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa asm bowtie2;
    cd ../..;
done

The parameters used for map-bowtie2-markduplicates.sh are:

• -c option to compute coverage histogram with genomeCoverageBed
• -t option is number of threads
• -p option is the extra parameters given to bowtie2. In this case -f.

The five arguments are:

• pair1, the fasta/fastq file with the #1 mates
• pair2, the fasta/fastq file with the #2 mates
• pair_name, a name for the pair used to prefix output files
• assembly, a fasta file of the assembly to map the pairs to
• assembly_name, a name for the assembly, used to postfix outputfiles
• outputfolder, the output files will end up in this folder

Generate coverage table¶

Use the bam files of each sample to create a table with the coverage of each contig per sample.

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/map
python $CONCOCT/scripts/gen_input_table.py --isbedfiles \
    --samplenames <(for s in Sample*; do echo $s | cut -d'_' -f1; done) \
    ../contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa */bowtie2/asm_pair-smds.coverage \
> concoct_inputtable.tsv
mkdir $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/concoct-input
mv concoct_inputtable.tsv $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/concoct-input/

Generate linkage table¶

The same bam files can be used to give linkage per sample between contigs:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/map
python $CONCOCT/scripts/bam_to_linkage.py -m 8 \
    --regionlength 500 --fullsearch \
    --samplenames <(for s in Sample*; do echo $s | cut -d'_' -f1; done) \
    ../contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa Sample*/bowtie2/asm_pair-smds.bam \
> concoct_linkage.tsv
mv concoct_linkage.tsv $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/concoct-input/

Run concoct¶

To see possible parameter settings with a description run

$CONCOCT/bin/concoct --help

We will only run concoct for some standard settings here. First we need to parse the input table to just contain the mean coverage for each contig in each sample:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
cut -f1,3- concoct-input/concoct_inputtable.tsv > concoct-input/concoct_inputtableR.tsv

Then run concoct with 40 as the maximum number of cluster -c 40, that we guess is appropriate for this data set:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
concoct -c 40 --coverage_file concoct-input/concoct_inputtableR.tsv --composition_file contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa -b concoct-output/

When concoct has finished the message “CONCOCT Finished, the log shows how it went.” is piped to stdout. The program generates a number of files in the output directory that can be set with the -b parameter and will be the present working directory by default.

Evaluate output¶

This will require that you have Rscript with the R packages gplots, reshape, ggplot2, ellipse, getopt and grid installed. The package grid does not have to be installed for R version > 1.8.0

First we can visualise the clusters in the first two PCA dimensions:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
mkdir evaluation-output
Rscript $CONCOCT/scripts/ClusterPlot.R -c concoct-output/clustering_gt1000.csv -p concoct-output/PCA_transformed_data_gt1000.csv -m concoct-output/pca_means_gt1000.csv -r concoct-output/pca_variances_gt1000_dim -l -o evaluation-output/ClusterPlot.pdf

https://github.com/BinPro/CONCOCT-test-data/tree/master/evaluation-output/ClusterPlot.pdf

We can also compare the clustering to species labels. For this test data set we know these labels, they are given in the file clustering_gt1000_s.csv. For real data labels may be obtained through taxonomic classification, e.g. using:

https://github.com/umerijaz/TAXAassign

In either case we provide a script Validate.pl for computing basic metrics on the cluster quality:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
cp $CONCOCT_TEST/evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_s.csv evaluation-output/
$CONCOCT/scripts/Validate.pl --cfile=concoct-output/clustering_gt1000.csv --sfile=evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_s.csv --ofile=evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_conf.csv --ffile=contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa

This script requires the clustering output by concoct concoct-output/clustering_gt1000.csv these have a simple format of a comma separated file listing each contig id followed by the cluster index and the species labels that have the same format but with a text label rather than a cluster index. The script should output:

N   M   TL  S   K   Rec.    Prec.   NMI Rand    AdjRand
684 684 6.8023e+06  5   4   0.897224    0.999604    0.841911    0.911563    0.823200

This gives the no. of contigs N clustered, the number with labels M, the number of unique labels S, the number of clusters K, the recall, the precision, the normalised mutual information (NMI), the Rand index, and the adjusted Rand index. It also generates a file called a confusion matrix with the frequencies of each species in each cluster. We provide a further script for visualising this as a heatmap:

$CONCOCT/scripts/ConfPlot.R  -c evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_conf.csv -o  evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_conf.pdf

This generates a file with normalised frequencies of contigs from each cluster across species:

https://github.com/BinPro/CONCOCT-test-data/tree/master/evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_conf.pdf

Validation using single-copy core genes¶

We can also evaluate the clustering based on single-copy core genes. You first need to find genes on the contigs and functionally annotate these. Here we used prodigal (https://github.com/hyattpd/Prodigal) for gene prediction and annotation, but you can use anything you want:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
mkdir -p $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/annotations/proteins
prodigal -a annotations/proteins/velvet_71_c10K.faa \
         -i contigs/velvet_71_c10K.fa \
         -f gff -p meta  > annotations/proteins/velvet_71_c10K.gff

We used RPS-Blast to COG annotate the protein sequences using the script RSBLAST.sh. You need to set the evironmental variable COGSDB_DIR:

export COGSDB_DIR=/proj/b2010008/nobackup/database/cog_le/

The script furthermore requires GNU parallel and rpsblast. Here we run it on eight cores:

$CONCOCT/scripts/RPSBLAST.sh -f annotations/proteins/velvet_71_c10K.faa -p -c 8 -r 1
mkdir $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE/annotations/cog-annotations
mv velvet_71_c10K.out annotations/cog-annotations/

The blast output has been placed in:

$CONCOCT_TEST/annotations/cog-annotations/velvet_71_c10K.out

Finally, we filtered for COGs representing a majority of the subject to ensure fragmented genes are not over-counted and generated a table of counts of single-copy core genes in each cluster generated by CONCOCT. Remember to use a real email adress, this is supplied since information is fetched from ncbi using their service eutils, and the email is required to let them know who you are.

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
$CONCOCT/scripts/COG_table.py -b annotations/cog-annotations/velvet_71_c10K.out \
-m $CONCOCT/scgs/scg_cogs_min0.97_max1.03_unique_genera.txt \
-c concoct-output/clustering_gt1000.csv \
--cdd_cog_file $CONCOCT/scgs/cdd_to_cog.tsv > evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_scg.tab

The script requires the clustering output by concoct concoct-output/clustering_gt1000.csv, a file listing a set of SCGs (e.g. a set of COG ids) to use scgs/scg_cogs_min0.97_max1.03_unique_genera.txt and a mapping of Conserved Domain Database ids (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/cdd/cdd.shtml) to COG ids $ONCOCT/scgs/cdd_to_cog.tsv. If these protein sequences were generated by Prokka, the names of the contig ids needed to be recovered from the gff file. Since prodigal has been used, the contig ids instead are recovered from the protein ids using a separator character, in which case only the string before (the last instance of) the separator will be used as contig id in the annotation file. In the case of prodigal the separator that should be used is _ and this is the default value, but other characters can be given through the ‘–separator’ argument.

The output file is a tab-separated file with basic information about the clusters (cluster id, ids of contigs in cluster and number of contigs in cluster) in the first three columns, and counts of the different SCGs in the following columns.

This can also be visualised graphically using the R script:

cd $CONCOCT_EXAMPLE
$CONCOCT/scripts/COGPlot.R -s evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_scg.tab -o evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_scg.pdf

The plot is downloadable here:

https://github.com/BinPro/CONCOCT-test-data/tree/master/evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_scg.pdf

Incorporating linkage information¶

To perform a hierarchical clustering of the clusters based on linkage we simply run:

$CONCOCT/scripts/ClusterLinkNOverlap.pl --cfile=concoct-output/clustering_gt1000.csv --lfile=concoct-input/concoct_linkage.tsv --covfile=concoct-input/concoct_inputtableR.tsv --ofile=concoct-output/clustering_gt1000_l.csv

The output indicates that the clusters have been reduced from four to three. The new clustering is given by concoct-output/clustering_gt1000_l.csv. This is a significant improvement in recall:

$CONCOCT/scripts/Validate.pl --cfile=concoct-output/clustering_gt1000_l.csv --sfile=evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_s.csv --ofile=evaluation-output/clustering_gt1000_conf.csv
N   M   TL  S   K   Rec.    Prec.   NMI Rand    AdjRand
684 684 6.8400e+02  5   3   1.000000    0.997076    0.995805    0.999979    0.999957

The algorithm is explained in more depth in the paper on arXiv