Nextflow HISAT2 command exit status 255 with prebuild index

Question

I have a problem with my nextflow pipeline.

My workflow looks like this:

1. Uncompress the hisat2 genotpye index grch38_genome.tar.gz from https://genome-idx.s3.amazonaws.com/hisat/grch38_genome.tar.gz

2. Align .fastq.gz files from /https://trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra/?run=SRR1806626 and https://trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra/?run=SRR1806627

However, in process HISAT2 I get command exit status 255:

Command error: "grch38" does not exist

The command executed is:

hisat2 --very-sensitive --no-spliced-alignment -x grch38 -U SRR1806626.fastq.gz > SRR1806626.fastq.sam

Can someone please explain to me what I'm doing wrong?

My script.nf file for reproducing the error looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env nextflow

nextflow.enable.dsl=2

params.reads = "$baseDir/data/*{1,2}*.fastq.gz" //https://trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra/?run=SRR1806626, https://trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra/?run=SRR1806627
params.hisat2_index = "$baseDir/data/*_genome.tar.gz" // https://genome-idx.s3.amazonaws.com/hisat/grch38_genome.tar.gz

log.info """\
         reads:        ${params.reads}
         hisat2_index: ${params.hisat2_index}
         """
         .stripIndent()

process UNCOMPRESS_GENOTYPE_INDEX {

  tag "$hisat2_index_ch.baseName"

  input:
  path(hisat2_index_ch)

  output:
  path('*')

  script:
  """
  tar xvzf $hisat2_index_ch
  """

}

process HISAT2 {

  tag "$reads.baseName"

  input:
  path(hisat2_indices)
  path(reads)

  output:
  path('*.sam')

  script:
  """
  hisat2 --very-sensitive \
         --no-spliced-alignment \
         -x $hisat2_indices \
         -U $reads \
         > ${reads.baseName}.sam
  """

}

workflow {

  Channel
    .fromPath( params.reads )
    .ifEmpty { exit 1, "reads was empty - no input files supplied" }
    .set { reads_ch }

  Channel.fromPath( params.hisat2_index )
    .ifEmpty { exit 1, "hisat2_index was empty - no input file supplied" }
    .set { hisat2_index_ch }

  UNCOMPRESS_GENOTYPE_INDEX(hisat2_index_ch)

  HISAT2(UNCOMPRESS_GENOTYPE_INDEX.out, reads_ch)

  //Command error:
  //(ERR): "grch38" does not exist
  //Exiting now ...

}

Kind regards, Thomas

Answer 1

The problem is probably that the tar process creates a folder with the genome files but the input for -x is not the folder with the index files but the basename of the index files itself.