Using Command Line Version of Tandem Repeats Finder

Once the program is installed you can run it with no parameters to obtain information on proper usage syntax.

If you installed the program as trf then by typing trf at the command line you will see the following output: 

Please use: trf File Match Mismatch Delta PM PI Minscore MaxPeriod [options]

Where: (all weights, penalties, and scores are positive)
 File = sequences input file
 Match = matching weight
 Mismatch = mismatching penalty
 Delta = indel penalty
 PM = match probability (whole number)
 PI = indel probability (whole number)
 Minscore = minimum alignment score to report
 MaxPeriod = maximum period size to report
 [options] = one or more of the following :
 -m masked sequence file
 -f flanking sequence
 -d data file

 Note the sequence file should be in FASTA format:

>Name of sequence
aggaaacctg ccatggcctc ctggtgagct gtcctcatcc actgctcgct gcctctccag atactctgac ccatggatcc cctgggtgca gccaagccac aatggccatg gcgccgctgt actcccaccc gccccaccct cctgatcctg ctatggacat ggcctttcca catccctgtg

The program accepts a minimum of eight parameters. Options can be specified to generate additional files.

The following is a more detailed description of the parameters:

• File: The sequence file to be analyzed in FASTA format( see for details). Multiple sequence in the same file are allowed.
• Match, Mismatch, and Delta: Weights for match, mismatch and indels. These parameters are for Smith-Waterman style local alignment using wraparound dynamic programming. Lower weights allow alignments with more mismatches and indels. A match weight of 2 has proven effective with mismatch and indel penalties in the range of 3 to 7. Mismatch and indel weights are interpreted as negative numbers. A 3 is more permissive and a 7 less permissive. The recomended values for Match Mismatch and Delta are 2, 7, and 7 respectively.
• PM and PI: Probabilistic data is available for PM values of 80 and 75 and PI values of 10 and 20. The best performance can be achieved with values of PM=80 and PI=10. Values of PM=75 and PI=20 give results which are very similar, but often require as much as ten times the processing time when compared with values of PM=80 and PI=10.
• Minscore: The alignment of a tandem repeat must meet or exceed this alignment score to be reported. For example, if we set the matching weight to 2 and the minimun score to 50, assuming perfect alignment, we will need to align at least 25 characters to meet the minimum score (for example 5 copies with a period of size 5).
• Maxperiod: Period size is the program's best guess at the pattern size of the tandem repeat. The program will find all repeats with period size between 1 and 2000, but the output can be limited to a smaller range.
• -m: This is an optional parameter and when present instructs the program to generate a masked sequence file. The masked sequence file is a FASTA format file containing a copy of the sequence with every location that occurred in a tandem repeat changed to the letter 'N'. The word "masked" is added to the sequence description line just after the '>' character.
• -f: If this option is present, flanking sequence around each repeat is recorded in the alignment file. This may be useful for PCR primer determination. Flanking sequence consists of the 500 nucleotides on each side of a repeat.
• -d: A data file is produced if this option is present. This file is a text file which contains the same information, in the same order, as the summary table file, plus consensus pattern and repeat sequences. This file contains no labeling and is suitable for additional processing, for example with a perl script, outside of the program.

       trf yoursequence.txt 2 7 7 80 10 50 500 -f -d -m

Once the program starts running it will print update messages to the screen. The word "Done" will be printed when the program finishes.

For single sequence input files there will be at least two HTML format output files, a repeat table file and an alignment file. If the number of repeats found is greater than 120, multiple linked repeat tables are produced. The links to the other tables appear at the top and the bottom of each table. To view the results start by opening the first repeat table file with your web browser. This file has the extension ".1.html". Alignment files can be accessed from the repeat table files. Alignment files end with the ".txt.html" extension.

For input files containing multiple sequences a summary page is produced that links to the output of individual sequences. This file has the extension "summary.html". You should start by opening this file if your input had multiple sequences in the same file. Also note that the output files of individual sequences will have an identifier of the form ".sn." ( n an integer) embedded in the name indicating the index of the sequence in the input file. The identifier is omitted for single sequence input files. 

For more information on the output please see Table Explanation and Alignment Explanation.

    Home

    What's New

    Submit Page

    Downloads