Main menu

BWA and LAST have been tuned to work with nanopore reads

  • Published on: May 13 2015

Burrow-Wheeler Aligner (BWA) for pairwise alignment between DNA sequences. BWA is a software package for mapping DNA 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 a few megabases. BWA-MEM and BWA-SW share similar features such as the support of long reads and chimeric alignment, but BWA-MEM, which is the latest, is generally recommended 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.

Authors: R. Durbin, H. Li

Getting started

Buy a MinION starter pack Nanopore store Sequencing service providers Channel partners

Quick links

Intellectual property Cookie policy Corporate reporting Privacy policy Terms, conditions and policies Accessibility

About Oxford Nanopore

Contact us News Media resources & contacts Investor centre Careers BSI 27001 accreditationBSI 90001 accreditationBSI mark of trust
Spanish flag