What you will be doing in Week 3

In week 2, you saw how the BlobToolKit viewer interface works. There are many powerful features and views that allow us to explore the contents of a genome assembly and identify the different organisms lurking within it.

You now know how to view a BTK plot, change its settings, and how to filter and selectively view sequences based on their GC%, coverage, and best blast hit. The public BTK viewer provides a way to examine genome assemblies already available in the public databases. We recommend that before you use any public genome assembly for your research, you examine its BTK plot to make sure there are no other organisms present.

The other way you can use BTK is during the process of assembling your own genome, before it is submitted to the public databases. In this week, we will see how BTK has been used in a real world setting by one of the course developers (Slimane Khaye) to assemble the genome of a fungus that infects plants.

You will also have a chance to complete an exercise cleaning up a real world assembly. You can submit your results as an assignment and receive feedback on your analysis.