Telomere-to-Telomere Assembly Using HERRO-Corrected Simplex Nanopore Reads - Nature

"HERRO (Haplotype-aware ERRor cOrrection) framework corrects ONT Simplex reads while carefully preserving differences in related genomic sequences, achieving an increase of read accuracy of up to 100-fold for diploid human genomes."

"By combining HERRO with the Verkko assembler, we reconstruct up to 32 chromosomes telomere-to-telomere, including chromosomes X and Y, and consistently achieve NGA50 values of 100 Mb or higher across several human genomes."

"These results show that error-corrected ONT reads can lower sequencing costs and improve the quality of genomic analyses, making them a viable alternative to traditional high-accuracy long reads."

Telomere-to-telomere phased assemblies are becoming benchmarks for reference-quality genomes but are costly and complex. Generating assemblies for diploid and polyploid genomes typically requires high-accuracy long reads and ultra-long ONT Simplex reads. The HERRO framework, developed for error correction of ONT Simplex reads, preserves genomic differences and increases read accuracy significantly. By combining HERRO with the Verkko assembler, up to 32 chromosomes can be reconstructed with high NGA50 values. HERRO is compatible with various ONT read versions and generalizes to other species, demonstrating improved genomic analysis quality and reduced costs.

Read at Nature