root/README

***MAKER Documentation***

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

INSTALLATION INSTUCTIONS FOR MAKER

*Step by step instructions are also available in the INSTALL text
file.

MAKER is an annotation pipeline.  In other words it links together
many steps and programs to produce final annotations.  For this
reason, you must first install a number of programs that MAKER depends
on.


To install maker, you will first need to install the following
external programs:

    *PERL 5.8.0 or higher
    *BioPerl 1.5 or higher (www.bioperl.org)
    *SNAP version 2009-02-03  or higher (homepage.mac.com/iankorf)
    *RepeatMasker 3.1.6  or higher (www.repeatmasker.org)
    *Exonerate 1.4  or higher (www.ebi.ac.uk/~guy/exonerate)

You must also install one of the following:

    *Wu-BLAST 2.0 or higher (Wu-BLAST is becoming AB-BLAST which can
     not yet be downloaded)
        or
    *NCBI BLAST 2.2.X or higher
     (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/download.shtml)
 
You might want to also install these optional external programs:

    *Augustus 2.0 or higher (augustus.gobics.de)
    *GeneMark.hmm-E 3.9 or higher (exon.biology.gatech.edu)
    *FgenesH (www.softberry.com/) - requires licence

To install mpi_maker, you must have an mpi package installed, try the
following:

    *MPICH2 (http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/)

Note: Remember to install MPICH2 with the --enable-sharedlibs flag set
to the appropriate value (See MPICH2 Installer's Guide at
http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/documentation/index.php?s=docs).


Notes:

1) Wu-BLAST is becoming AB-BLAST.  Once AB-BLAST becomes available we
   will do some testing to see if it is compatible with MAKER.
   Wu-BLAST is no longer available online, so if you don't already
   have it, you will have to use NCBI BLAST instead.
2) RepeatMasker requires Wu-BLAST or Cross_Match and a single file
   executable called TRF (see RepeatMasker website for details), so
   please install these before installing RepeatMasker
3) Exonerate Binaries can be downloaded from the website.  If you use
   Mac OSX, however, binaries are only available for version 1.0.
   This verion will work too.  If you would like to compile exonerate,
   it requires GLIB, a C-library, that has a link from the exonerate
   website.  If you use Mac OSX, GLIB can downloaded using FINK.
4) RepeatMasker requires a repeat library file, which can be
   downloaded from Repbase upon registration
   (http://www.girinst.org/), this is explained on the RepeatMasker
   website.
5) Please note the location of all of the programs that you have
   installed, and add them to you $PATH variable in your .profile
   file.  You will need this information in the maker.exe file, one
   of MAKER's 3 control files.

Now that you have all the necessary programs installed, MAKER can be
unpacked using:

 tar xvfz maker.tar.gz

This will create a directory called maker with 5 sub directories:

    bin    - contains the maker executables.
    lib    - contains all the necessary perl libaries for MAKER.
    MPI    - contains MPI specific data to configure MAKER for a
             cluster that supports MPI.
    Apollo - contains gff3.tiers file (See section titled APOLLO
             below)
    data   - contains some sample data used to make sure everything
             works.
    perl   - contains perl modules that need to be compiled

Finally change to the maker/perl directory and type: 'perl Install.PL'
to compile required perl modules.

Now you can run MAKER!!

Maker uses control files to guide each run.  Generic control files can
be built using the -CTL flag in maker.  These control files can then
be edited by the user to identify the location of all required input
data and statistics.  Control files are run specific and seperate
control will need to be built for each genome given to maker.  Maker
will look for control files in the current working directory, so it is
recomended that maker should be ran in a seperate directory containing
unique control files for each genome.

Control files:

    1. maker_exe.ctl - contains the path information for needed
       executables.

    2. maker_bopts - contains filtering statistics for BLAST and
       Exonerate.

    3. maker_opts.ctl - contains all other information for MAKER,
       including the location of the input genome file.

Always remember to examine the control files before each run of MAKER
on your specific data.

Programs required by maker rely on certain environmental variables
being set.  If you have not set these variables per the installation
instructions of the external programs, a reminder list is provided
below:

for tcsh:
setenv PERL5LIB where_bioperl_is_installed
setenv WUBLASTMAT where_wublast_is_installed/matrix
setenv ZOE where_snap_is_installed
setenv WUBLASTFILTER where_wublast_is_installed/filter
setenv AUGUSTUS_CONFIG_PATH where_augustus_is_installed/config

for bash:
export PERL5LIB=where_bioperl_is_installed
export WUBLASTMAT=where_wublast_is_installed/matrix
export ZOE=where_snap_is_installed
export WUBLASTFILTER=where_wublast_is_installed/filter
export AUGUSTUS_CONFIG_PATH=where_augustus_is_installed/config

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

MPI MAKER INSTALL

If you are running maker on an MPI capable cluster, you can install an
MPI version of maker by doing the following:

    1. Install standard maker and verify that it runs.
    2. Install MPICH2 with the --enable-sharedlibs flag set to the
       appropriate value (See MPICH2 documentation)
    3. Use cd to change to the MPI subdirectory in the maker
       instalation folder (i.e. maker/MPI/)
    4. Run Install.PL by typing: perl Install.PL

A new version of maker called mpi_maker should now be installed under
maker/bin.

To run mpi_maker, first verify that your mpi environment is initiated,
(i.e. using the mpdboot or mpd command). Now start mpi_maker via
mpiexec.

Example: (This will run MAKER on 3 nodes or processors)

mpiexec -n 3 perl maker_directory/maker/bin/mpi_maker maker_opts.ctl \
maker_bopts.ctl maker_exe.ctl

Please see the documentation of the MPI environment you use for
instructions on how to initiate an MPI process.

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

MAKER USAGE STATEMENT

Usage:

maker [options] <maker_opts> <maker_bopts> <maker_exe> <evaluator>

Maker is a program that produces gene annotations in GFF3 file format
using evidence such as EST alignments and protein homology.  Maker can
be used to produce gene annotations for new genomes as well as update
annoations from existing genome databases.

The four input arguments are user control files that specify how maker
should behave. The evaluator options file contains control options
specific for the evaluation of gene annotations. All options for maker
should be set in the control files, but a few can also be set on the
command line.  Command line options provide a convenient machanism to
override commonly altered control file values.

Input files listed in the control options files must be in fasta
format.  Please see maker documentation to learn more about control
file configuration.  Maker will automatically try and locate the user
control files in the current working directory if these arguments are
not supplied when initializing maker.

It is important to note that maker does not try and recalculated data
that it has already calculated.  For example, if you run an analysis
twice on the same dataset file you will notice that maker does not
rerun any of the blast analyses, but instead uses the blast analyses
stored from the previous run.  To force maker to rerun all analyses,
use the -f flag.


Options:

  -genome|g <filename> Specify the genome file.

  -predictor|p <type>  Selects the predictor(s) to use when
                       building annotations.  Use a ',' to
                       seperate types (no spaces).
                       i.e. -predictor=snap,augustus,fgenesh

                       types: snap
                              augustus
                              fgenesh
                              genemark
                              est2genome (Uses EST's directly)
                              abinit (ab-initio predictions)
                              model_gff (Passes through GFF3
                                         annotations)

  -RM_off|R           Turns all repeat masking off.

  -retry   <integer>  Rerun failed contigs up to the specified count.

  -cpus|c  <integer>  Tells how many cpus to use for BLAST analysis.

  -force|f            Forces maker to delete old files before running
                      again.  This will require all blast analyses to
                      be rerun.

  -evaluate|e         Run Evaluator on final annotations (under
                      development).

  -quiet|q            Silences most of maker's status messages.

  -CTL                Generate empty control files in the current
                      directory.

  -help|?             Prints this usage statement.


#---------------------------------------------------------------------

RUNNING MAKER WITH EXAMPLE DATA

1) Copy the files in the data directories to a temporary directory
   where you will run an example file.
2) Type maker -CTL to generate generic maker control files
3) Next you will need to edit the control files to include the path of
   the genome file, EST file, and protein file, as well as the paths
   to all required executables.  See CONFIG FILE EDITING for more
   information.
4) Then try the following command from your temporary directory:

perl maker_directory/bin/maker maker_exe.ctl maker_opts.ctl \
maker_bopts.ctl

MAKER will create at least the following files/directories:

1) XXX.maker.output/ - contains all output for a given run of make
2) XXX.maker.output/XXX_master_datastore_index.log - log of MAKER run
   progress as well as an index for traversing
   XXX.maker.output/XXX_datastore/
3) XXX.maker.output/XXX_datastore/ - contains folders containing the
   output for each individual contig of the input fasta file

Within these folders:
    * seq_name.gff - a gff file that can be loaded into GMOD, GBROWSE,
      or Apollo
    * seq_name.maker.transcripts.fasta - a file of the maker
      transcript sequences
    * seq_name.maker.proteins.fasta - a file of the maker protein
      sequences
    * seq_name.maker.XXX.transcript.fasta - a file of ab-inito
      transcript sequences from program XXX
    * seq_name.maker.XXX.proteins.fasta - a file of ab-inito protein
      sequences from program XXX
    * seq_name.maker.non_overlapping_ab_initio.transcripts.fasta - a
      file of filtered ab-inito transcript sequences that don't
      overlap annotations
    * seq_name.maker.non_overlapping_ab_initio.proteins.fasta - a
      file of filtered ab-inito protein sequences that don't overlap
      annotations
    * theVoid.seq_name/ - a directory containing all of the raw
      output files produced by maker, including BLAST reports, SNAP
      output, exonnerate output and the masked sequence.

WARNING:

* The names of output files are based on sequence ids.  If giving
  maker a multi-fasta file, it is important to verify that all
  sequence id are unique, so files are not overwritten.

* If there are more than 1,000 sequences in a multi-fasta file a deep
  datastore structure will be used. see DATASTORE in this document.

* If sequence ids contain characters that are illegal in file names,
  those characters will be replaced automatically before building
  output file names.

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

DATASTORE

"Many filesystems have performance problems with large numbers of
subdirectories and files within a single directory and even when the
underlying filesystems handle things gracefully, access via network
filesystems can be an issue.  The Datastore modules create a hiearchy
of subdirectory layers, starting from a 'base', and mapping end-user's
identifiers to the corresponding subdirectory." - quote from
http://www.yandell-lab.org/ (See site for more information on the
Datastore module)

A deep datastore will be used by maker if there are more than 1,000
sequences in a multi-fasta file.

When a datastore is implemented, the output files described above will
not appear where you would normally expect them to be.  Instead they
will be located in a series of sub-directory under a new
base-directory whose name is determined from the input genome file
name:

i.e. current_directory/genome_datastore/EE/Af/Contig1/Contig1.gff.

A master_datastore_index file will be made in the current working
directory to help you find the output files from each sequence.

The master_datastore_index file is a file created to allow the user to
easily find the exact output directory corresponding to contigs from
the input genome file.  The The master_datastore_index file contains
three columns of text; the first column shows the sequence identifier
from each fasta header, and the second column shows the location of
the output files for that sequence. The third column is for logging
the status of data related to an individual contig. The values of the
third column are as follows:
    * STARTED - Indicates that maker has started proccessing this
      contig.
    * FINISHED - Indicates that maker has finished processing this
      contig and all data is currently available in that subdirectory.
    * DIED - Indicates that maker failed.
    * DIED_SKIPPED_PERMANENT - Indicates that maker failed up to the
      specified number of retries and will not try again.
    * RETRY - Indicates that maker is retrying the contig after a
      failure.
    * SKIPPED_SMALL - Indicates that this contig was skipped because
      it is too short (based on control file values set by the user).

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

CONFIG FILE EDITING

Lines in the maker control files have the format key:value whith no
spaces before or after the colon(:).  If the value is a file name, you
can use relative paths and environmental variables,
i.e. genome:$HOME/my_genome.fasta


MAKER has 3 control files for configuration options. A fourth file
evaluator.ctl is used to supply a MAKER related program EVALUATOR with
options specific to that program (only important if 'evaluate' is set
to 1 in maker_opts.ctl).

Note that for all control files the comments written to help users
begin with a pound sign(#).  In addition, options before the colon(:)
can not be changed, nor should there be a space before or after the
colon.

A. maker_exe.ctl - includes information about programs executed by
MAKER.
Here an example of a section of the maker_exe.ctl file:

#-----Location of Executables Used by Maker/Evaluator

#location of NCBI formatdb executable   
formatdb:/usr/local/bin/formatdb                              
#location of NCBI blastall executable   
blastall:/usr/local/bin/blastall                              
#location of WUBLAST xdformat executable        
xdformat:/usr/local/bin/xdformat                              
#location of WUBLAST blastn executable  
blastn:/usr/local/bin/blastn                                  
#location of WUBLAST blastx executable  
blastx:/usr/local/bin/blastx                                  
#location of WUBLAST tblastx executable 
tblastx:/usr/local/bin/tblastx                                
#location of RepeatMasker executable    
RepeatMasker:/home/cholt/usr/local/RepeatMasker/RepeatMasker  
#location of exonerate executable         
exonerate:/home/cholt/usr/local/exonerate/bin/exonerate       

#-----Ab-initio Gene Prediction Algorithms

#location of snap executable              
snap:/home/cholt/usr/local/snap/snap                  
#location of eukaryotic genemark executable 
gmhmme3:/home/cholt/usr/local/gmes/gmhmme3            
#location of augustus executable                  
augustus:/home/cholt/usr/local/augustus/bin/augustus  
#location of fgenesh executable             
fgenesh:/home/cholt/usr/local/fgenesh/fgenesh         

B. maker_bopts.ctl - contains statistics for fltering blast and
exonerate data.
Here an example of a section of the maker_bopts.ctl file:

#-----BLAST and Exonerate statistics thresholds
#set to 'wublast' or 'ncbi'
blast_type:wublast    
#Blastn Percent Coverage Threhold EST-Genome Alignments 
pcov_blastn:0.8       
#Blastn Percent Identity Threshold EST-Genome Aligments 
pid_blastn:0.85       
#Blastn eval cutoff                                   
eval_blastn:1e-10     
#Blastn bit cutoff                                      
bit_blastn:40         

#Blastx Percent Coverage Threhold Protein-Genome Alignments
pcov_blastx:0.5       
#Blastx Percent Identity Threshold Protein-Genome Aligments
pid_blastx:0.4        
#Blastx eval cutoff                                      
eval_blastx:1e-06     
#Blastx bit cutoff                                       
bit_blastx:30         

#Blastx Percent Coverage Threhold For Transposable Element Masking 
pcov_rm_blastx:0.5    
#Blastx Percent Identity Threshold For Transposbale Element Masking
pid_rm_blastx:0.4     
#Blastx eval cutoff for transposable element masking             
eval_rm_blastx:1e-06  
#Blastx bit cutoff for transposable element masking              
bit_rm_blastx:30      

C. maker_opts.ctl - contains options for maker and external programs
used by maker.
Here an example of a section of the maker_opts.ctl file:

#-----Genome (Required for De-Novo Annotations)
#genome sequence file in fasta format
genome:input/genome.fasta

#-----Re-annotation Options

#re-annotate genome based on this gff3 file                 
genome_gff:     
#use ests in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no                    
est_pass:0      
#use alternate organism ests in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no 
altest_pass:0   
#use proteins in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no                
protein_pass:0  
#use repeats in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no                 
rm_pass:0       
#use gene models in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no             
model_pass:0    
#use ab-initio predictions in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no   
pred_pass:0     
#passthrough everything else in genome_gff: 1 = yes, 0 = no 
other_pass:0    

#-----EST Evidence (you must provide a value for at least one)

#non-redundant set of assembled ESTs in fasta format (classic EST
#analysis)
est:input/est.fasta        
#un-assembled EST reads in fasta format (for deep nextgen mRNASeq)
est_reads:                 
#EST/cDNA sequence file in fasta format from an alternate organism
altest:input/altest.fasta  
#EST evidence from a seperate gff3 file                               
est_gff:                   
#Alternate organism EST evidence from a seperate gff3 file
altest_gff:                

#-----Protein Homology Evidence (you must provide a value for at least
#     one)
#protein sequence file in fasta format
protein:input/protein.fasta
#protein homology evidence from a gff3 file
protein_gff:

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

GFF3 Passthrough

If you have data from a source that MAKER does not support, and you
wish to use the data in annotating a genome, then you can pass the
data to MAKER as an aligned GFF3 file.  This is done by supplying the
files location to the appropriate value in the maker_opt.ctl file
(i.e. est_gff:input\est.gff).  Note that MAKER expects all data sent
to it to be of the type specified, so don't put mixed data in a file
(i.e. don't mix EST and other data in the file pointed to by est_gff,
otherwise it all gets used as EST data).  Also the genome_gff option
is only for MAKER produced GFF3 files.  Other GFF3 files of mixed data
must be split by type and identified by the appropriate control file
option (i.e. rm_gff for repeat data, pred_gff for ab-initio prediction
data, est_gff for EST data, etc.).

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDING UTRs for GBROWSE

When using APOLLO to visualize gene annotations, UTRs are inferred
based on exon and CDS locations.  However GMOD and GBROWSE do not
infer the UTR, so to visualize the UTR, you will have to run:
add_utr_gff.pl with the following command:

maker2zff.pl <directory>

    * <directory> is the directory where all of your GFF files are
                  located.

Each GFF file will have a sister file called sequence.wutr.gff3.

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

APOLLO

Maker is bundled with a configuration file that improves the color and
display of maker annotations and evidence in the Apollo genome
browser.  The configuration file is called "gff3.tiers" and is located
in the maker/Apollo/ directory.  The file should be copied to the
conf/ sub_directory which is located under the Apollo instalation
directory.  Using the Mac version of Apollo the conf/ directory is
located at /Applications/Apollo.app/Contents/Resources/app/conf/.

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

HMM BUILDING (based on snap documentation)


A) First you will need to determine the genes used to model future
   genes, by determining a high quality gene set (annotations for the
   high quality gene should be in GFF3 format).  The high quality gene
   set can then be coverted into snap ZFF format using maker2zff.pl
   found in maker/bin.

   This program is run with the following command:

       maker2zff.pl <directory> genome

       * <directory> is the directory where all of your GFF3 files are
         located
       * geneome is the name for the outfile

   Files Created:
       genome.ann
       genome.dna

   Note: A convenient way to identify and initial high quality gene
   set for the HMM is to use the -predictor est2genome option in
   maker.  This will produce gene annotations based solely on EST
   evidence.  These annoations can then seed the first HMM.  After
   running maker again using this new HMM and the -predictor snap
   option, you can use the second round of annotations as the seed
   for an even better HMM model. In this way the HMM model
   progressively improves with each run of maker.

   Another strategy for identifying an initial gene set to model the
   HMM is to use the program CEGMA (http://korflab.ucdavis.edu/
   software.html).  CEGMA builds a highly reliable set of gene
   annotations in the absence of experimental data by identifying DNA
   regions with homology to a set of 458 proteins that are highly
   conserved among taxa.

   Combining both CEGMA and maker datasets to build the first HMM is
   also a good strategy.

B) Next you will use the dna and zff file (genome.dna and genome.ann)
   to produce a SNAP HMM as described in the SNAP documention (which
   we have provided below):

   The first step is to look at some features of the genes:

       fathom genome.ann genome.dna -gene-stats 

   Next, you want to verify that the genes have no obvious errors:

       fathom genome.ann genome.dna -validate

   You may find some errors and warnings. Check these out in some kind
   of genome browser and remove those that are real errors. Next,
   break up the sequences into fragments with one gene per sequence
   with the following command:

       fathom -genome.ann genome.dna -categorize 1000

   There will be up to 1000 bp on either side of the genes. You will
   find several new files.

       alt.ann, alt.dna (genes with alternative splicing)
       err.ann, err.dna (genes that have errors)
       olp.ann, olp.dna (genes that overlap other genes)
       wrn.ann, wrn.dna (genes with warnings)
       uni.ann, uni.dna (single gene per sequence)

   Convert the uni genes to plus stranded with the command:

       fathom uni.ann uni.dna -export 1000 -plus

   You will find 4 new files:

       export.aa   proteins corresponding to each gene
       export.ann  gene structure on the plus strand
       export.dna  DNA of the plus strand
       export.tx   transcripts for each gene

   The parameter estimation program, forge, creates a lot of files.
   You probably want to create a directory to keep things tidy before
   you execute the program.

       mkdir params
       cd params
       forge ../export.ann ../export.dna
       cd ..

   Last is to build an HMM.

       hmm-assembler.pl my-genome params > my-genome.hmm

   Lastly, you will want to add the location of your hmm file to your
   maker_opts.ctl file.

* For more information see SNAP documentation on how to build an HMM