Genome sequencing of bacteria: sequencing, de novo assembly and rapid analysis using open source tools

Free and open source software (FOSS) tools for assembly and annotation of NGS data are being developed rapidly to provide accurate results with less computational effort. Usability is not high priority and these tools currently do not allow the data to be processed without manual intervention. Despite this, genome assemblers now readily assemble medium short reads into long contigs (>97-98% genome coverage). A notable gap in pyrosequencing technology is the quality of base pair calling and conflicting base pairs between single reads at the same nucleotide position. Regardless, using draft whole genomes that are not finished and remain fragmented into tens of contigs allows one to characterize unknown bacteria with modest effort.