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Knowledge base

The knowledge base is how seqforge knows what a sequencing library is. It holds one entry per technology — the read layout, the barcode positions, the barcode lists — and seqforge scores your files against every entry to find the one the bytes actually match. The entry it picks decides how your data is parsed.

You don't choose an entry; the bytes do. These pages are here so you can see what seqforge recognises, and understand the answer when it tells you what your data is.

Supported assays

assay what it is told apart by
10x Chromium 3' v3 / v3.1 droplet single-cell, current 3' kit 28 bp barcode read + 10x's barcode list
10x Chromium 3' v2 droplet single-cell, previous 3' kit 26 bp barcode read (2 bp shorter than v3)
BD Rhapsody WTA microwell single-cell, 3-block cell label two fixed linkers + three barcode lists
SPLiT-seq instrument-free split-pool single-cell two fixed linkers + three round-barcode lists
Bulk paired-end RNA-seq plain bulk RNA-seq, no barcodes the absence of a barcode read

How the entries are organized

Related chemistries are grouped into a family. The 10x 3' family, for example, is a single loose pattern ("a 16 bp barcode in a 26–28 bp read") that first says "this is 10x 3' something," then descends to the exact member — v2, v3, or v3.1 — by read length and barcode list. Grouping this way means seqforge can recognise a family from a fuzzy metadata mention and still pin the precise chemistry from the bytes.

Two chemistries that are genuinely indistinguishable from the reads and processed identically (v3 and v3.1) are recorded as both names, with no question asked. Two that look alike but would be processed differently are separated by whatever can tell them apart — usually the barcode list — and if nothing can, seqforge asks you rather than guessing.

Adding a technology

Every entry is executable: it declares a chemistry precisely enough that seqforge can generate synthetic reads from it, probe them, and check it recovers what it declared. If you want to teach seqforge a new chemistry, the Adding a technology tutorial walks through it.

For the human-readable descriptions of each library structure, the Teichmann Lab's scg_lib_structs is an excellent reference, and each assay page below links to its entry there where one exists.