Celera Assembler
Overview
Celera Assembler is scientific software for DNA research. It can reconstruct long sequences of genomic DNA given the fragmentary data produced by whole-genome shotgun sequencing. The Celera Assembler has enabled discovery in microbial genomes, large eukaryotic genomes, diploid genomes, and genomes from environmental samples. Celera Assembler contributed the first diploid sequence of an individual human, and metagenomics assemblies of the Global Ocean Sampling
The Celera Assembler is a member of a class of software called whole-genome shotgun assemblers. The Celera Assembler is mature, efficient, software with a long record of contributions to science. Celera Assembler is written mostly in C for unix operating systems. Although it requires large compute resources to resolve complex genomes, it can assemble bacterial genomes on a laptop.
The Celera Assembler operates on DNA sequences from Sanger sequencing machines such as the ABI 3730. It operates on data from pyrosequencing machines such as the 454 FLX and 454 XLR. It also operations on hybrid combinations of Sanger and pyrosequencing data.
This important software is an "open source" project. Originally developed at Celera Genomics, it was released under the GNU Public License and deposited on a public repository (Source Forge) in 2004. Scientists around the world can download, build, and run the software without restriction. In addition, they can inspect the source code and alter it at their own sites.
JCVI maintains and improves the Celera Assembler source code in collaboration with scientists at the University of Maryland. JCVI's efforts provide the cutting edge software that genome scientists around the world will need as they apply DNA sequencing technology to more and more difficult problems of biology.
Funding
This work is supported by the National Insitutes of Health (NIH) including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).