MHASS: Microbiome HiFi Amplicon Sequencing Simulator
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: SUMMARY: Microbiome HiFi Amplicon Sequence Simulator (MHASS) creates realistic synthetic PacBio HiFi amplicon sequencing datasets for microbiome studies, by integrating genome-aware abundance modeling, realistic dual-barcoding strategies, and empirically derived pass-number distributions from actual sequencing runs. MHASS generates datasets tailored for rigorous benchmarking and validation of long-read microbiome analysis workflows, including ASV clustering and taxonomic assignment. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Implemented in Python with automated dependency management, the source code for MHASS is freely available at https://github.com/rhowardstone/MHASS along with installation instructions. Our code is also published on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17486364. The data underlying this article are available on GitHub at https://github.com/rhowardstone/MHASS_evaluation/.
Source: Bioinformatics
Authors: Rye Howard-Stone, Ion I Măndoiu
Institution: University of Connecticut
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,989
OpenAlex ID: W4417091097