The kmer spectrum is an important place to start looking when things aren’t going to plan with your assembly. It can tell you a lot about the data, and give hints as to why you might be encountering problems. It is also a good idea to use it as a sanity check even when things seem to be going well.
To help you get started, we’ve prepared a short primer on the kmer spectrum, as automatically produced by ALLPATHS-LG pipeline.
It is also possible to generate the kmer spectrum independently, and you can find out how to do this by looking at our stand alone error correction script.