Projector: automatic contig mapping for gap closure purposes

Projector was designed for automatic positioning of contigs from an unfinished prokaryotic genome onto a template genome of a closely related strain or species. Projector mapped 84 contigs of Lactococcus lactis MG1363 (corresponding to 81% of the assembly nucleotides) against the genome of L.lactis IL1403. Ninety three percent of subsequent gap closure PCRs were successful. Moreover, a significant improvement in the N50 and N80 values (describing the assembly quality) was observed after the use of Projector. Because increasing numbers of bacterial genomes are being sequenced, Projector provides an efficient method to close a significant number of remaining gaps in the late stages of a genome sequencing project.