Fig. 1. PlasmidHawk Pipeline.

First, a pan-genome from the Addgene plasmids is built by Plaster. The plasmids are then aligned back to the final pan-genome to annotate the pan-genome with the depositing lab information for each aligned fragment. To predict the lab-of-origin of an unknown plasmid, PlasmidHawk aligns the unknown plasmid to the annotated pan-genome (Prediction Step 1) and counts the number of aligned fragments for each lab (Prediction Step 2). PlasmidHawk returns the labs that have the maximum number of aligned fragments as the predicted labs for lab-of-origin (Prediction Step 2). Finally, PlasmidHawk calculates the plasmid lab score for each lab. This step takes the labs with the minimum lab score as a final refinement step of its predictions for lab-of-origin (Prediction Step 3).