K-mer counter tool should write k-mers occurring only once to the output file?

Question

[saranpons3]

Dear Members,

I would like to know that Are k-mers whose occurrence is only 1(one) have any purpose in assembling/in any other Bioinformatics problem? A K-mer counter tool should write k-mers occurring only once to the output file?

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

Since measurements are affected by random errors a kmer that was seen only once is typically considered to have originated from such an error. This reasoning usually holds - but of course, as always, there may be exceptions to it.

Which kmers are written to a file is an implementation detail - and may depend on the tool.

[saranpons3]

@Istvan Albert, Thanks for replying. Do you mean that K-mers which are occurring only once in the data set does not have any significance/purpose in assembling or any other bio-informatics problems?

[5heikki]

Due to redundancy a singleton k-mer in reads is likely a sequencing error. They could be significant post assembly though..

[saranpons3]

Thx 5heikki for your answer. It means can I say that generating singleton kmers is must by kmer counter tools.