Consed: a graphical editor for next-generation sequencing

The rapid growth of DNA sequencing throughput in recent years implies that graphical interfaces for viewing and correcting errors must now handle large numbers of reads, efficiently pinpoint regions of interest and automate as many tasks as possible. We have adapted consed to reflect this. To allow full-feature editing of large datasets while keeping memory requirements low, we developed a viewer, bamScape, that reads billion-read BAM files, identifies and displays problem areas for user review and launches the consed graphical editor on user-selected regions, allowing, in addition to long-standing consed capabilities such as assembly editing, a variety of new features including direct editing of the reference sequence, variant and error detection, display of annotation tracks and the ability to simultaneously process a group of reads. Many batch processing capabilities have been added.