Fast and Accurate Draft Genome Patching with GPatch

Recent advancements in sequencing technologies have yielded numerous long-read draft genomes, promising to enhance our understanding of genomic variation. However, draft genomes are typically highly fragmented, posing significant challenges for functional genomics. We introduce GPatch, a tool that constructs chromosome-scale pseudoassemblies from fragmented drafts using alignments to a reference genome. GPatch produces complete, accurate, gap-free assemblies preserving over 95% of nucleotides from draft genomes. We show that GPatch assemblies can be used as references for Hi-C data analysis, whereas draft assemblies cannot. Until complete genome assembly becomes routine, GPatch presents a necessary tool for maximizing the utility of draft genomes.