Parallel Implementation of Motif-Based Clustering for HT-SELEX Dataset

A clustering method for high-throughput sequencing with SELEX pools (HT-SELEX) is crucial for selecting different types of aptamer candidates. The fast and accurate clustering method is indispensable for an enormous sequence data produced by HT-SELSEX. We have already developed a fast motif-based clustering (FMBC) method for HT-SELEX data implemented by R language. FMBC exhibited high accuracy of sequence clustering compared with conventional methods, while the processing time of FMBC is longer than AptaCluster. This paper proposes the parallel implementation of FMBC using Python with multi-threading to improve the performance of FMBC. Experimental evaluation using the NCBI SRA data of SRR3279661 from BioProject PRJNA315881 demonstrated that parallel FMBC exhibited higher accuracy of clustering and shorter processing time than conventional methods.