#15 · Tools & infrastructure

Faster, portable tools for demultiplexing, QC, bin refinement and fungal ITS abundance

The common thread is implementation for practical execution in long-read and multiplexed sequencing workflows. RastQC reimplements FastQC modules in Rust, reporting 1.8-6.5x speedups and lower memory use while adding long-read metrics. deluxpore packages BLAST and Levenshtein matching in a Nextflow pipeline to demultiplex Nanopore reads from Illumina dual-indexed libraries. itBins applies rule-based refinement over GC content, coverage, and taxonomy to metagenomic bins and is reported to outperform MDMcleaner and Rosella. EMITS is methodologically distinct, applying expectation-maximization to minimap2 alignments against UNITE for species-level fungal ITS abundance from long reads. What is new is mainly the packaging of these methods for scalable, portable execution rather than new analytical models, with EMITS as the exception in introducing an estimation approach.