Golden Helix Blog

Alternate Allele Frequency and VCF File Format

Dec 7, 2021

VCF file format comes with a lot of interesting quality assurance and statistics fields that can be used for filtering in VarSeq. Open your files in a text editor to see all the fields that are available in your files, each field will have a header line with a description…

Read more →

VarSeq 2.2.4 Release

Nov 30, 2021

We are very excited to announce that just last week, we released VarSeq 2.2.4! In the past few months, we have been building the excitement for the 2.2.4 version of VarSeq with several webcasts in which we describe some of the headlining features in detail such as the new support…

Read more →

Breaking Down ACMG CNV Guidelines in VSClinical

Nov 25, 2021

In February 2020, the American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG) and the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) published a joint consensus on standards for the interpretation and reporting of copy number variants (CNVs) ranging from large CNVs spanning multiple genes to small intragenic events1. The guidelines consist of over 80 different…

Read more →

Highlights From Our Golden Helix CancerKB Webcast

Nov 24, 2021

Thank you to everyone who attended Using Golden Helix CancerKB to Accelerate NGS Cancer Testing! I had a great time showing off Golden Helix CancerKB and how it can enhance NGS analysis in cancer, I certainly hope you enjoyed it! If you were unable to make the live session, we…

Read more →

Top FAS Tricks You Wish You Knew When Getting Started with VSClinical

Nov 18, 2021

As a newer member of the Golden Helix FAS Team I, like many of our customers, went through a phase of learning the ins, outs, and shortcuts of clicking around the program. In an effort to expedite new users coming up to speed, or to teach some tricks to experienced…

Read more →

Validating Your CNV Workflow

Nov 16, 2021

The VarSeq CNV calling algorithm, VS-CNV, is a powerful tool for calling CNVs from the NGS coverage data stored in your BAM files. However, before this algorithm can be deployed in a clinical setting, it must be tuned and validated using data that is representative of your lab’s NGS workflow.…

Read more →

Running VSPipeline from a Docker Container

Nov 10, 2021

As a lab or group scales the number of NGS samples analyzed, it is important to automate the sample analysis pipeline from the sequencer to the point where it is ready for a variant scientist or lab personnel to follow the interpretation workflow and draft a clinical report. VSPipeline leverages…

Read more →

VarSeq Advanced Reporting Customizations: Part 1

Nov 9, 2021

As we move towards the end of the year, our FAS Team is excited to announce our short blog series highlighting some of the Customization Features in our up-and-coming VarSeq release! The goal of this blog series is to show examples of how generating a clinical report can be customized…

Read more →

Customer Publications in October 2021

Oct 28, 2021

The customer-published articles this October cite the range of Golden Helix’s VarSeq annotation range and capability. The following publications feature everything from annotating an Italian nobleman mummy, assisting in identifying mutations in primary congenital and juvenile glaucoma, new mutations associated with muscular dystrophinopathy, and germline variants associated with head and…

Read more →

Details of the Golden Helix CancerKB Database Update

Oct 21, 2021

Recently we have released blog posts discussing updates to annotations in VarSeq such as ClinVar and COSMIC. Keeping with that trend, in this blog post, I will discuss the most recent updates to the Golden Helix CancerKB database. For those how may be unfamiliar with the Golden Helix CancerKB source,…

Read more →

Five Annotation Sources You Should Know

Oct 19, 2021

In addition to Golden Helix providing easy-to-use genomic software, we also provide value to our users by automating the curation of public databases used in our tools. These annotation sources serve multiple purposes not only leveraging key fields in the filter chain but also automatically supplying evidence for the ACMG…

Read more →

Reviewing Clinical Studies for Novel Splice Variants in VSClinical

Oct 12, 2021

In order to thoroughly assess a variant’s pathogenicity, it is important to take into account the variant’s effect on splicing. While the interpretation of variants that disrupt the pairs of bases at the beginning of a splice site is fairly straightforward, variants resulting in the introduction of a novel splice…

Read more →

Customer Publications in September 2021

Sep 30, 2021

In September 2021, published articles citing Golden Helix software serve as a testament to our product’s broad applications and utility in NGS data analysis. We are always proud of our customers and the contributions they make to advancing scientific discovery and are grateful to be included in their research. This…

Read more →

Updates to Somatic Variant Annotation and a New Way to Evaluate Fusions in VSClinical

Sep 29, 2021

With the release of VarSeq 2.2.4 just around the corner, I want to detail some new 2.2.4 features that will enhance somatic variant annotation and fusion analysis within VSClinical. A webcast back in July showed some of these updates in action, so if you are looking for some more content…

Read more →

Customized Reports in VSClinical with New Output Types

Sep 23, 2021

Golden Helix VSClinical provides a guided workflow interface for following the ACMG and AMP guidelines to evaluate variants and CNVs for NGS tests. The output of this work is most often a lab-specific clinical report. Since it was introduced, we have provided a powerful Word-based templating system to allow labs…

Read more →

Updates to ClinVar Curation to Include More Pathogenic Variants

Sep 14, 2021

In the September 2021 monthly update to our curated ClinVar track, we made some changes that will result in roughly another 7,000 Likely Pathogenic and Pathogenic variants being available for annotation and use in the ACMG auto-classification system.  Consensus Between Labs  ClinVar has nearly one million unique variant classification records that are curated into multiple annotation…

Read more →

Case Study with LifeCell International: Transforming Precision Medicine in India

Sep 13, 2021

Established in 2004 and headquartered in Chennai, India, with regional centers across the country, LifeCell runs India’s largest stem cell bank and has also diversified into diagnostics and tissue therapeutics. They employ roughly 2,000 people, providing genetic services to customers in the mother and baby space. Phani Nagaraja Setty is…

Read more →

Merging VCFs in an Imperfect World

Sep 7, 2021

Merging variant records, VCFs, across samples is important when performing trio or family analysis as it ensures that hereditary relationships can be properly inferred. There are many ways to represent a single variant. Insertions and deletions may be right or left aligned, prefixes and suffixes can be added, and adjacent…

Read more →

2021 T-Shirt Design Competition Winners

Sep 2, 2021

We would like to thank everyone who participated in our 2021 t-shirt design competition. It was great to see the amount of creativity our community expressed and was certainly a tough decision to make! We are pleased to announce this year’s winners: First Place – Bruce Eng For over 35…

Read more →

VSClinical Customer Publications for August 2021

Aug 31, 2021

Welcome to the August 2021 edition of our customer publications blog post! Each month we spotlight a few recently published articles by our incredible Golden Helix customers. With users spanning both research and clinical spaces, the topics vary widely across many fields. This month, we will be highlighting VSClinical users…

Read more →