151 - Deacon part 1

In this Software Deep Dive episode, we talk with Dr. Bede Constantinides (University of Birmingham) about Deacon, a tool for removing host DNA reads from metagenomic datasets. We discuss why host read removal is a deceptively difficult problem, the limitations of alignment-based approaches, and how Deacon evolved from Bede's earlier tool Hostile. The conversation covers practical issues such as…