Nanocall: an open source basecaller for Oxford Nanopore sequencing data

Abstract Motivation The highly portable Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencer has enabled new applications of genome sequencing directly in the field. However, the MinION currently relies on a cloud computing platform, Metrichor (metrichor.com), for translating locally generated sequencing data into basecalls. Results To allow offline and private analysis of MinION data, we created Nanocall. Nanocall is the first freely available, open-source basecaller for Oxford Nanopore sequencing data and does not require an internet connection. Using R7.3 chemistry, on two E.coli and two human samples, with natural as well as PCR-amplified DNA, Nanocall reads have ∼68% identity, directly comparable to Metrichor ‘1D’ data. Further, Nanocall is efficient, processing ∼2500 Kbp of sequence per core hour using the fastest settings, and fully parallelized. Using a 4 core desktop computer, Nanocall could basecall a MinION sequencing run in real time. Metrichor provides the ability to integrate the ‘1D’ sequencing of template and complement strands of a single DNA molecule, and create a ‘2D’ read. Nanocall does not currently integrate this technology, and addition of this capability will be an important future development. In summary, Nanocall is the first open-source, freely available, off-line basecaller for Oxford Nanopore sequencing data. Availability and Implementation Nanocall is available at github.com/mateidavid/nanocall, released under the MIT license. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.