# MHASS: Microbiome HiFi Amplicon Sequencing Simulator

## TL;DR

MHASS is a tool that generates realistic synthetic sequencing data for microbiome studies to improve analysis workflows.

## Contribution

MHASS introduces a genome-aware method for simulating HiFi amplicon data with realistic barcoding and sequencing characteristics.

## Key findings

- MHASS integrates abundance modeling and pass-number distributions from real sequencing runs.
- The tool supports benchmarking of long-read microbiome analysis workflows like ASV clustering.
- MHASS is freely available with installation instructions and evaluation data.

## Abstract

Microbiome HiFi Amplicon Sequence Simulator (MHASS) creates realistic synthetic PacBio HiFi amplicon sequencing datasets for microbiome studies, by integrating genome-aware abundance modeling, realistic dual-barcoding strategies, and empirically derived pass-number distributions from actual sequencing runs. MHASS generates datasets tailored for rigorous benchmarking and validation of long-read microbiome analysis workflows, including ASV clustering and taxonomic assignment.

Implemented in Python with automated dependency management, the source code for MHASS is freely available at https://github.com/rhowardstone/MHASS along with installation instructions. Our code is also published on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17486364. The data underlying this article are available on GitHub at https://github.com/rhowardstone/MHASS_evaluation/.