oh, my friend; 

the Boost version in biodeps was selected after lot of trial and error.
IMHO, the next best Boost version after 1.51 is 1.47 (or the opposite? lol... classic boost story)

If someone can tell us which kind of Boost version allows ABySS to build along with most other `bio` class packages, I'm very interested to know that, because I've burned some time on this with no conclusion.
(trying to settle on a biodeps set that maximizes on compatibility)