Table 1.

Common modifications applied to the basic de Bruijn graph (DBG) data structure and examples of applications that utilize them

Modification	Key concept	Applications
Coloring	Each k‐mer in the DBG is associated with annotation information describing its original source (e.g., genome, read)	MetaGraph, TwoPaCo, Cuttlefish, Bifrost, Cortex, MCCortext, DiscoSnp, Bubbleparse, Scalpel, LUEVARI, Rainbowfish, Mantis, VARI
Succinct representation	Data in the DBG is represented as a bit vector or other space‐efficient representation	MegaGTA, MEGAHIT, MetaGraph, Rainbowfish
Simplification/compaction	K‐mers in the graph are collapsed into larger linear sequences and bubbles or tips caused by potential errors are removed from the graph	Simpletigs, splitMEM, MetaGraph
Weighting	Additional data is used to add weights to paths in the graph which can be used in subsequent assembly and analysis	Xander, MegaGTA