primer-schemes

Primer schemes for real-time genome epidemiology

About

The primer schemes in this repository were built using Primal Scheme and are available for the following viruses:

  • Monkeypox virus (mpxv-2022)

Within each virus directory, there are versioned sub-directories which each contain a versioned scheme for that virus.

The following files are available per scheme version:

file extension about
.primer.bed The coordinates of each primer in the scheme
.insert.bed The coordinates of the expected amplicons that the scheme produces (excluding primers)
.reference.fasta The sequence of the reference genome used for the scheme
.tsv Details on each primer in the scheme (name, sequence, length, GC, TM)

For more information visit the ARTIC network website.

Notes

  • There may be some additional files in the scheme directories - these are either deprecated and left for backward compatibility (e.g. scheme.bed), or are created by Primal Scheme check here for more info.
  • The schemes are in BED format, which is a 0-based, half-open format. This means that reference sequence position counting starts at 0 and the chromEnd is not included in the primer sequence.

Primer scheme file format

The .scheme.bed file has the following columns:

column name type description
1 chrom string primer reference sequence
2 chromStart int starting position of the primer in the reference sequence
3 chomEnd int ending position of the primer in the reference sequence
4 name string primer name
5 primerPool int primer pool*
6 strand string (+/-) primer direction

* column 5 in the BED spec is an int for score, whereas here we are using it to denote primerPool.