Quickstart Guide

Installation

On a Linux machine, download a copy of Sunbeam from our GitHub repository, and install. We do not currently support non-Linux environments.

git clone -b stable https://github.com/sunbeam-labs/sunbeam sunbeam-stable
cd sunbeam-stable
./install.sh
tests/run_tests.bash -e sunbeam

This installs Sunbeam and all its dependencies, including the Conda environment manager, if required. It then runs some tests to make sure everything was installed correctly.

Tip

If you’ve never installed Conda before, you’ll need to add it to your shell’s path. If you’re running Bash (the most common terminal shell), the following command will add it to your path: echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/miniconda3/bin' > ~/.bashrc

If you see “Tests failed”, check out our troubleshooting section or file an issue on our GitHub page.

Setup

Let’s say your sequencing reads live in a folder called /sequencing/project/reads, with one or two files per sample (for single- and paired-end sequencing, respectively). These files must be in gzipped FASTQ format.

Let’s create a new Sunbeam project (we’ll call it my_project):

source activate sunbeam
sunbeam init my_project --data_fp /sequencing/project/reads

Sunbeam will create a new folder called my_project and put two files there:

  • sunbeam_config.yml contains all the configuration parameters for each step of the Sunbeam pipeline.
  • samples.csv is a comma-separated list of samples that Sunbeam found the given data folder, along with absolute paths to their FASTQ files.

Right now we have everything we need to do basic quality-control and contig assembly. However, let’s go ahead and set up contaminant filtering and some basic taxonomy databases to make things interesting.

Contaminant filtering

Sunbeam can align your reads to an arbitrary number of contaminant sequences or host genomes and remove reads that map above a given threshold.

To use this, make a folder containing all the target sequences in FASTA format. The filenames should end in “fasta” to be recognized by Sunbeam. In your sunbeam_config.yml file, edit the host_fp: line in the qc section to point to this folder.

Taxonomic classification

Sunbeam can use Kraken to assign putative taxonomic identities to your reads. While creating a Kraken database is beyond the scope of this guide, pre-built ones are available at the Kraken homepage. Download or build one, then add the path to the database under classify:kraken_db_fp:.

Contig annotation

Sunbeam can automatically BLAST your contigs against any number of nucleotide or protein databases and summarize the top hits. Download or create your BLAST databases, then add the paths to your config file, following the instructions on here: blastdbs. For some general advice on database building, check out the Sunbeam databases repository and for specific links please see the usage section: Building Databses.

Reference mapping

If you’d like to map the reads against a set of reference genomes of interest, follow the same method as for the host/contaminant sequences above. Make a folder containing FASTA files for each reference genome, then add the path to that folder in mapping:genomes_fp:.

Running

After you’ve finished editing your config file, you’re ready to run Sunbeam:

sunbeam run --configfile my_project/sunbeam_config.yml

By default, this will do a lot, including trimming and quality-controlling your reads, removing contaminant, host, and low-complexity sequences, assigning read-level taxonomy, assembling the reads in each sample into contigs, and then BLASTing those contigs against your databases. Each of these steps can also be run independently by adding arguments after the sunbeam run command. See Running for more info.

Viewing results

The output is stored by default under my_project/sunbeam_output. For more information on the output files and all of Sunbeam’s different parts, see our full User Guide!