ScaffMatch: scaffolding algorithm based on maximum weight matching

Next-generation high-throughput sequencing has become a state-of-the-art technique in genome assembly. Scaffolding is one of the main stages of the assembly pipeline. During this stage, contigs assembled from the paired-end reads are merged into bigger chains called scaffolds. Because of a high level of statistical noise, chimeric reads, and genome repeats the problem of scaffolding is a challenging task. Current scaffolding software packages widely vary in their quality and are highly dependent on the read data quality and genome complexity. There are no clear winners and multiple opportunities for further improvements of the tools still exist.