to-trans

A high-performance exon/CDS spliced transcriptome builder from fasta + GTF/GFF. This is a command-line tool written in Rust designed to build a transcriptome by using a genome (.fa) and a gene model (.gtf/.gff).

Usage

High-performance transcriptome builder from fasta + GTF/GFF

Usage: to-trans --fasta <FASTA> --gtf <GTF> [OPTIONS]

--Arguments:
  -f, --fasta <FASTA>  Path to your .fa file
  -g, --gtf <GTF/GFF>      Path to your .gtf/.gff file

Options:
  -m, --mode <MODE>      Feature to extract from GTF/GFF file (exon or CDS) [default: exon]
  -o, --out <OUT>      Path to output file [default: transcriptome.fa].
  -t, --threads <THREADS>      Number of threads [default: max ncpus] 
  -h, --help           Print help
  -V, --version        Print version

crate: https://crates.io/crates/to-trans

What's new on v.0.2.0

• Now to-trans is ~2-3s faster!
• A parallel approach is now the main algorithm to assemble transcript sequences

Work coming...

to-trans is intended to grow with time, expanding its options and capabilities. In the next release features like: intron extraction, length-based transcriptomes, chromosome-specific builds, among others are coming!

Install/Build

to install to-trans, do:

1. get rust: curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh on unix, or go here for other options
2. run cargo install to-trans (make sure ~/.cargo/bin is in your $PATH before running it)

to build to-trans, do:

1. get rust (as described above)
2. run git clone https://github.com/alejandrogzi/to-trans.git && cd to-trans
3. run cargo run --release <FASTA> <GTF/GFF> <MODEL> <OUTPUT>

by default to-trans uses exon mode and sends the output to ./transcriptome.fa

Benchmark

Note that this benchamark is outdated. Now to-trans is ~2-3s faster! For the human genome/gtf, to-trans takes 6 seconds to build a complete transcriptome, that is approximately x3 times faster than GFFRead!

Besides some particular species, such as human (GRCh38) or mouse (GRCm39) that have transcriptomes available, most of the animal kingdom does not count with a pre-defined file with transcript sequences. This becomes a problem when working at the transcript/isoform level.

Compared to GFFRead (1), a gff/gtf utility with a vast range of capabilities, to-trans is able to build a complete transcriptome x2 times faster without the need of indexing the input genome. On the human model, to-trans reaches 8s tops while GFFRead max at 15s with an index (.fai) already available. For the dog, a species without transcript sequences offered in public databases, to-trans takes 3.5s compared to GFFRead doubled times (6s and 12s for indexed and not indexed genomes, respectively).

to-trans offers a novel option to build a transcriptome from a genome + gene model in a very efficent manner. This tool provides high-performance and efficiency without the need of envirnoments or intrincate dependencies, and could be easily attached to workflows/pipelines.

References

1. Pertea G and Pertea M. GFF Utilities: GffRead and GffCompare [version 1; peer review: 3 approved]. F1000Research 2020, 9:304 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.23297.1) [https://github.com/gpertea/gffread]