Journal Article

DKFZ-2026-01781

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png TelomereHunter2: improved in silico telomere analysis software for precision oncology and single-cell studies.

Popp, F. (First author)DKFZ* ; Biondi, N.DKFZ* ; Pogorevčnik, U.DKFZ* ; Abad, N.DKFZ* ; Hong, C.DKFZ* ; Pageaud, Y.DKFZ* ; Brors, B.DKFZ* ; Feuerbach, L. (Last author)DKFZ*

2026
Oxford University Press Oxford

Abstract: Telomere biology plays a critical role in multiple biological processes including carcinogenesis, aging, and genome stability. With increasing availability of DNA-sequence datasets, telomere length and composition are more frequently directly inferred in silico. The TelomereHunter software is used in genome research and precision oncology to study telomere maintenance mechanisms from routine sequencing data. However, bioinformatics tools face constant challenges such as increasing the number and size of genomic datasets, novel file formats and deprecating software components.We developed TelomereHunter2 (TH2) to create a sustainable framework for telomere analysis. By containerizing our software and improving the runtime by up to 74%, we simplify the integration of TH2 into diverse precision oncology workflows and computational environments. We also extended TH2 to support non-human genomes and single-cell sequencing approaches, broadening its applications across species and methodologies. We demonstrate TH2 improvements on a pilot dataset.TelomereHunter2 is an open-source Python package released under the GPL-3.0 license. It is distributed via PyPI and the source code, documentation, and wiki are available at: https://github.com/ferdinand-popp/TelomereHunter2.

Keyword(s): Bioinformatics ; Computational Genomics ; Next-Generation Sequencing ; Sequence Analysis ; Telomeres

Note: #EA:B330#LA:B330# / #DKTKZFB26# / #NCTZFB26#

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Angewandte Bioinformatik (B330)
2. DKTK HD zentral (HD01)
3. Koordinierungsstelle NCT Heidelberg (HD02)

Research Program(s):

1. 312 - Funktionelle und strukturelle Genomforschung (POF4-312) (POF4-312)

Appears in the scientific report 2026

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Database coverage:
; ; ; Article Processing Charges ; BIOSIS Previews ; Biological Abstracts ; Clarivate Analytics Master Journal List ; DOAJ Seal ; Emerging Sources Citation Index ; Fees ; PubMed Central ; SCOPUS ; Web of Science Core Collection

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