SRA Toolkit Documentation

Tool: fastq-dump

Usage:

fastq-dump [options] <path/file> [<path/file> ...]

fastq-dump [options] <accession>

Frequently Used Options:

General:
-h	\|	--help	Displays ALL options, general usage, and version information.
-V	\|	--version	Display the version of the program.
Data formatting:
		--split-files	Dump each read into separate file. Files will receive suffix corresponding to read number.
		--split-spot	Split spots into individual reads.
		--fasta <[line width]>	FASTA only, no qualities. Optional line wrap width (set to zero for no wrapping).
-I	\|	--readids	Append read id after spot id as 'accession.spot.readid' on defline.
-F	\|	--origfmt	Defline contains only original sequence name.
-C	\|	--dumpcs <[cskey]>	Formats sequence using color space (default for SOLiD). "cskey" may be specified for translation.
-B	\|	--dumpbase	Formats sequence using base space (default for other than SOLiD).
-Q	\|	--offset <integer>	Offset to use for ASCII quality scores. Default is 33 ("!").
Filtering:
-N	\|	--minSpotId <rowid>	Minimum spot id to be dumped. Use with "X" to dump a range.
-X	\|	--maxSpotId <rowid>	Maximum spot id to be dumped. Use with "N" to dump a range.
-M	\|	--minReadLen <len>	Filter by sequence length >= <len>
		--skip-technical	Dump only biological reads.
		--aligned	Dump only aligned sequences. Aligned datasets only; see sra-stat.
		--unaligned	Dump only unaligned sequences. Will dump all for unaligned datasets.
Workflow and piping:
-O	\|	--outdir <path>	Output directory, default is current working directory ('.').
-Z	\|	--stdout	Output to stdout, all split data become joined into single stream.
		--gzip	Compress output using gzip.
		--bzip2	Compress output using bzip2.

Use examples:

fastq-dump -X 5 -Z SRR390728

Prints the first five spots (-X 5) to standard out (-Z). This is a useful starting point for verifying other formatting options before dumping a whole file.

fastq-dump -I --split-files SRR390728

Produces two fastq files (--split-files) containing ".1" and ".2" read suffices (-I) for paired-end data.

fastq-dump --split-files --fasta 60 SRR390728

Produces two (--split-files) fasta files (--fasta) with 60 bases per line ("60" included after --fasta).

fastq-dump --split-files --aligned -Q 64 SRR390728

Produces two fastq files (--split-files) that contain only aligned reads (--aligned; Note: only for files submitted as aligned data), with a quality offset of 64 (-Q 64) Please see the documentation on vdb-dump if you wish to produce fasta/qual data.

Possible errors and their solution:


                fastq-dump.2.x err: item not found while constructing within virtual database module -
                the path '<path/SRR*.sra>' cannot be opened as database or table

This error indicates that the .sra file cannot be found. Confirm that the path to the file is correct.


                fastq-dump.2.x err: name not found while resolving tree within virtual
                file system module - failed SRR*.sra

The data are likely reference compressed and the toolkit is unable to acquire the reference sequence(s) needed to extract the .sra file. Please confirm that you have tested and validated the configuration of the toolkit. If you have elected to prevent the toolkit from contacting NCBI, you will need to manually acquire the reference(s) here