scholarly journals Genomic variant calling: Flexible tools and a diagnostic data set

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lawrence ◽  
Melanie A Huntley ◽  
Eric Stawiski ◽  
Art Owen ◽  
Thomas D Wu ◽  
...  

The accurate identification of low-frequency variants in tumors remains an unsolved problem. To support characterization of the issues in a realistic setting, we have developed software tools and a reference dataset for diagnosing variant calling pipelines. The dataset contains millions of variants at frequencies ranging from 0.05 to 1.0. To generate the dataset, we performed whole-genome sequencing of a mixture of two Corriel cell lines, NA19240 and NA12878, the mothers of YRI (Y) and CEU (C) HapMap trios, respectively. The cells were mixed in three different proportions, 10Y/90C, 50Y/50C and 90Y/10C, in an effort to simulate the heterogeneity found in tumor samples. We sequenced three biological replicates for each mixture, yielding approximately 1.4 billion reads per mixture for an average of 64X coverage. Using the published genotypes as our reference, we evaluate the performance of a general variant calling algorithm, constructed as a demonstration of our flexible toolset, and make comparisons to a standard GATK pipeline. We estimate the overall FDR to be 0.028 and the FNR (when coverage exceeds 20X) to be 0.019 in the 50Y/50C mixture. Interestingly, even with these relatively well studied individuals, we predict over 475,000 new variants, validating in well-behaved coding regions at a rate of 0.97, that were not included in the published genotypes.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Howison ◽  
Mia Coetzer ◽  
Rami Kantor

ABSTRACTMotivationNext-generation deep sequencing of viral genomes, particularly on the Illumina platform, is increasingly applied in HIV research. Yet, there is no standard protocol or method used by the research community to account for measurement errors that arise during sample preparation and sequencing. Correctly calling high and low frequency variants while controlling for erroneous variant calls is an important precursor to downstream interpretation, such as studying the emergence of HIV drug-resistance mutations, which in turn has clinical applications and can improve patient care.ResultsWe developed a new variant-calling pipeline, hivmmer, for Illumina sequences from HIV viral genomes. First, we validated hivmmer by comparing it to other variant-calling pipelines on real HIV plasmid data sets, which have known sequences. We found that hivmmer achieves a lower rate of erroneous variant calls, and that all methods agree on the frequency of correctly called variants. Next, we compared the methods on an HIV plasmid data set that was sequenced using an amplicon-tagging protocol called Primer ID, which is designed to reduce errors and amplification bias during library preparation. We show that the Primer ID consensus does indeed have fewer erroneous variant calls compared to the variant-calling pipelines, and that hivmmer more closely approaches this low error rate compared to the other pipelines. Surprisingly, the frequency estimates from the Primer ID consensus do not differ significantly from those of the variant-calling pipelines. Finally, we built a predictive model for classifying errors in the hivmmer alignment, and show that it achieves high accuracy for identifying erroneous variant calls.Availabilityhivmmer is freely available for non-commercial use from https://github.com/mhowison/[email protected]


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang Xu ◽  
Xiujing Gu ◽  
Raghavendra Padmanabhan ◽  
Zhong Wu ◽  
Quan Peng ◽  
...  

AbstractMotivationLow-frequency DNA mutations are often confounded with technical artifacts from sample preparation and sequencing. With unique molecular identifiers (UMIs), most of the sequencing errors can be corrected. However, errors before UMI tagging, such as DNA polymerase errors during end-repair and the first PCR cycle, cannot be corrected with single-strand UMIs and impose fundamental limits to UMI-based variant calling.ResultsWe developed smCounter2, a UMI-based variant caller for targeted sequencing data and an upgrade from the current version of smCounter. Compared to smCounter, smCounter2 features lower detection limit at 0.5%, better overall accuracy (particularly in non-coding regions), a consistent threshold that can be applied to both deep and shallow sequencing runs, and easier use via a Docker image and code for read pre-processing. We benchmarked smCounter2 against several state-of-the-art UMI-based variant calling methods using multiple datasets and demonstrated smCounter2’s superior performance in detecting somatic variants. At the core of smCounter2 is a statistical test to determine whether the allele frequency of the putative variant is significantly above the background error rate, which was carefully modeled using an independent dataset. The improved accuracy in non-coding regions was mainly achieved using novel repetitive region filters that were specifically designed for UMI data.AvailabilityThe entire pipeline is available at https://github.com/qiaseq/qiaseq-dna under MIT license.


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 507
Author(s):  
Bernd Timo Hermann ◽  
Sebastian Pfeil ◽  
Nicole Groenke ◽  
Samuel Schaible ◽  
Robert Kunze ◽  
...  

Detection of genetic variants in clinically relevant genomic hot-spot regions has become a promising application of next-generation sequencing technology in precision oncology. Effective personalized diagnostics requires the detection of variants with often very low frequencies. This can be achieved by targeted, short-read sequencing that provides high sequencing depths. However, rare genetic variants can contain crucial information for early cancer detection and subsequent treatment success, an inevitable level of background noise usually limits the accuracy of low frequency variant calling assays. To address this challenge, we developed DEEPGENTM, a variant calling assay intended for the detection of low frequency variants within liquid biopsy samples. We processed reference samples with validated mutations of known frequencies (0%–0.5%) to determine DEEPGENTM’s performance and minimal input requirements. Our findings confirm DEEPGENTM’s effectiveness in discriminating between signal and noise down to 0.09% variant allele frequency and an LOD(90) at 0.18%. A superior sensitivity was also confirmed by orthogonal comparison to a commercially available liquid biopsy-based assay for cancer detection.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gundula Povysil ◽  
Monika Heinzl ◽  
Renato Salazar ◽  
Nicholas Stoler ◽  
Anton Nekrutenko ◽  
...  

Abstract Duplex sequencing is currently the most reliable method to identify ultra-low frequency DNA variants by grouping sequence reads derived from the same DNA molecule into families with information on the forward and reverse strand. However, only a small proportion of reads are assembled into duplex consensus sequences (DCS), and reads with potentially valuable information are discarded at different steps of the bioinformatics pipeline, especially reads without a family. We developed a bioinformatics toolset that analyses the tag and family composition with the purpose to understand data loss and implement modifications to maximize the data output for the variant calling. Specifically, our tools show that tags contain polymerase chain reaction and sequencing errors that contribute to data loss and lower DCS yields. Our tools also identified chimeras, which likely reflect barcode collisions. Finally, we also developed a tool that re-examines variant calls from raw reads and provides different summary data that categorizes the confidence level of a variant call by a tier-based system. With this tool, we can include reads without a family and check the reliability of the call, that increases substantially the sequencing depth for variant calling, a particular important advantage for low-input samples or low-coverage regions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Marios Lange ◽  
Rodiola Begolli ◽  
Antonis Giakountis

The cancer genome is characterized by extensive variability, in the form of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) or structural variations such as Copy Number Alterations (CNAs) across wider genomic areas. At the molecular level, most SNPs and/or CNAs reside in non-coding sequences, ultimately affecting the regulation of oncogenes and/or tumor-suppressors in a cancer-specific manner. Notably, inherited non-coding variants can predispose for cancer decades prior to disease onset. Furthermore, accumulation of additional non-coding driver mutations during progression of the disease, gives rise to genomic instability, acting as the driving force of neoplastic development and malignant evolution. Therefore, detection and characterization of such mutations can improve risk assessment for healthy carriers and expand the diagnostic and therapeutic toolbox for the patient. This review focuses on functional variants that reside in transcribed or not transcribed non-coding regions of the cancer genome and presents a collection of appropriate state-of-the-art methodologies to study them.


Genetics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 162 (1) ◽  
pp. 381-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig A Webb ◽  
Todd E Richter ◽  
Nicholas C Collins ◽  
Marie Nicolas ◽  
Harold N Trick ◽  
...  

AbstractIn maize, the Rp3 gene confers resistance to common rust caused by Puccinia sorghi. Flanking marker analysis of rust-susceptible rp3 variants suggested that most of them arose via unequal crossing over, indicating that rp3 is a complex locus like rp1. The PIC13 probe identifies a nucleotide binding site-leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) gene family that maps to the complex. Rp3 variants show losses of PIC13 family members relative to the resistant parents when probed with PIC13, indicating that the Rp3 gene is a member of this family. Gel blots and sequence analysis suggest that at least 9 family members are at the locus in most Rp3-carrying lines and that at least 5 of these are transcribed in the Rp3-A haplotype. The coding regions of 14 family members, isolated from three different Rp3-carrying haplotypes, had DNA sequence identities from 93 to 99%. Partial sequencing of clones of a BAC contig spanning the rp3 locus in the maize inbred line B73 identified five different PIC13 paralogues in a region of ∼140 kb.


2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Guy Tartarin ◽  
Geoffroy Soubercaze-Pun ◽  
Abdelali Rennane ◽  
Laurent Bary ◽  
Robert Plana ◽  
...  

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