HISAT-3N: a rapid and accurate three-nucleotide sequence aligner

Abstract

Nucleotide conversion sequencing technologies such as bisulfite-seq and SLAM-seq are powerful tools to explore the intricacies of cellular processes. In this paper, we describe HISAT-3N (hierarchical indexing for spliced alignment of transcripts - 3 nucleotides), which rapidly and accurately aligns sequences consisting of nucleotide conversions by leveraging powerful hierarchical index and repeat index algorithms originally developed for the HISAT software. Tests on real and simulated data sets demonstrate that HISAT-3N is over 7 times faster, has greater alignment accuracy, and has smaller memory requirements than other modern systems. Taken together HISAT-3N is the ideal aligner for use with converted sequence technologies.