Golden Helix Blog

Predicting the Functional Impact of Genetic Variants Using VarSeq

Aug 9, 2022

Large-scale next-generation sequencing studies are becoming increasingly popular clinical and research tools. One enduring challenge for interpretion of these large amounts of data has been predicting the functional impact of genetic variants. Access to efficient computational tools for predicting the functional impact of variants is crucial to prioritizing the most…

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FASTQ to Report: Streamlining the Process with Golden Helix Software

Aug 3, 2022

Manually converting FASTQs to VCFs, importing these into VarSeq, and building projects from scratch is adequate when you have only a handful of cases per week. But as you start ramping up production, the key to your lab’s success quickly becomes how quickly and efficiently you can get to the…

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July 2022 Customer Publications

Jul 28, 2022

July 2022 brought about several customers having success with utilizing our VarSeq software. We saw publicized research regarding Axenfield-Reiger syndrome, Septo-Optic Dysplasia, and association of TGFBI variants. This range of customer usage displays the vast capabilities of VarSeq and the applications it can work with. Axenfeld-Rieger syndrome: more than meets…

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Locking down clinically validated workflows for routine analysis

Jul 20, 2022

Let’s say you are the director of a large lab, which is running tens or hundreds of standard NGS sample analyses per week. You have a number of employees with varying levels of analysis background, and you want to be sure everyone is running the analysis the same way. You…

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Handling a Variety of CNV Caller Inputs with VarSeq – Webcast Recap

Jul 19, 2022

First, thank you to everyone who joined us for our recent webcast, Handling a Variety of CNV Caller Inputs with VarSeq. Also, we would like to thank those that Tweeted #CNVsupport @GoldenHelix or emailed us ([email protected]) to throw in their questions. This was a successful trial run, and we would…

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Getting the most out of variant visualizations in GenomeBrowse

Jun 29, 2022

Genomic data visualization is an extremely powerful means to help users comprehend massive amounts of sequencing data and is valuable for communicating genomic information and findings. Genome browser tools allow users to visualize aligned sequence data in BAM format, map the data to a reference assembly, view annotation tracks, genomic…

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Customer Publications June 2022

Jun 28, 2022

Below is a list of highlighted peer-reviewed publications from this month. The Golden Helix team consistently enjoys seeing our software applications hard at work in the field, whether it is clinical whole-exome sequencing, targeted CNV identification, or genotype-phenotype correlations. Enjoy reading below how our suite of VarSeq, VSClinical, and VS-CNV…

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A Great Return to ESHG 2022

Jun 22, 2022

The Golden Helix team just returned from ESHG 2022 in Vienna, Austria. It was a great opportunity to speak with colleagues, customers, and partners face-to-face which many of us greatly missed. It has been three years since the last ESHG occurred in this format. Here are  three takeaways from this…

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Headed to Vienna, Austria for ESHG 2022

Jun 9, 2022

Our team is excited to be in Vienna, Austria for the European Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting (ESHG) 2022. We are looking forward to spending the week discussing genetics with new and familiar faces! If you are planning on attending, please stop by our booth and say hello! You…

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Customizing Your Clinical Reports: Reordering the Variant List

Jun 7, 2022

Oftentimes, the endpoint of a clinical variant analysis is a standardized, clinical report. As such, we ship a number of default templates with VSClinical for users to report their findings. But these templates are just a starting point! Our platform allows users to fully customize their reports to adhere to…

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Customer Publications May 2022

May 31, 2022

As we look back on May 2022, I wanted to highlight a range of applications that our VarSeq suite is capable of and show the success of our partners. In these publications, our VarSeq suite is utilized for the analysis of whole-exome, clinical variant classification and association, and assisting in…

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Import CNVs from any secondary caller using VarSeq

May 25, 2022

Advances in high-throughput sequencing have allowed us to be able to detect structural variants such as copy number variants in addition to small variants such as SNVs and indels. We provide users with an industry-leading CNV calling algorithm to detect CNVs directly from their next-generation sequencing data including whole genome,…

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Questions from Webcast: Evaluating Cloud vs On-Premises for NGS Clinical Workflows

May 23, 2022

In the era where cloud-based solutions are the default for the modern office, it may not be obvious why many laboratories and testing centers choose to host their data and analysis pipelines on-premises or on self-managed cloud services. In the recent webcast Evaluating Cloud vs On-Premises for NGS Clinical Workflows,…

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CNV Probability and Inheritance Based on Coverage with VarSeq

May 17, 2022

The overall objective of Trio Analysis is to leverage inheritance data to determine the ancestry of variants in the proband, whether that be through transmission from the mother and father, or of de novo origin. We have previously covered family based analysis in this blog post and this webcast, but…

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What’s Coming to VSClinical: Expanded Clinical Trial Search Results

May 17, 2022

While the interpretation of germline variants generally focuses on the pathogenicity of a variant for a specific disease, the interpretation of somatic variants is centered around each variant’s impact on clinical care. As a result, clinical trials play an important role in assessing the clinical significance of somatic biomarkers, with…

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Sentieon Updates: Now Supporting Long-Read Alignment and Calling

May 9, 2022

Here at Golden Helix, we’ve sought to develop top-quality bioinformatic software to handle not only high-throughput clinical next-gen sequencing pipelines but also cater to research groups exploring their cohorts. Our tools fit in this NGS pipeline by importing the VCF and BAM files for downstream filtration, annotation, and classification/interpretation as…

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Mining Curated Databases for Literature in VSClinical

Apr 29, 2022

Curated databases are a real time saver when compiling published evidence to support your variant evaluations and classifications. Leveraging the curated databases at your fingertips in our VSClinical variant interpretation hub is even more efficient. Not only does VSClinical provides users with automated variant classification for germline variants according to…

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Customer Success

Apr 27, 2022

For this month’s Customer Success blog, I decided to revisit some of my favorite studies that had previously been featured in years past. At the time we first highlighted the below publications, some of them were in pre-print and have since been accepted and published. What they all have in…

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Mining VarSeq Curated Databases for Literature – Raw Data Search in Variant Table or GenomeBrowse

Apr 21, 2022

An under-utilized use of VarSeq is the ability of mining raw variant data in GenomeBrowse for relevant literature. By bringing in various public and private annotation sources, GenomeBrowse allows the user to interface with raw variant data in a compressed and manageable view. This blog will show you how to…

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Annotation Updates: RefSeq and Ensembl gene tracks for GRCh38

Apr 20, 2022

I’d like to take a moment to announce the release of updated gene tracks for the GRCh38 genome assembly! Gene annotation tracks are essential to all VarSeq projects and workflows. Whether your favorite gene track is Ensembl or RefSeq, both sources have been updated and released and can be used…

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