Analyzing Whole Exome, Large-n Cohorts in SVS

         November 25, 2014

It’s come to my attention in recent weeks, through various customer interactions, that many are not aware of the fantastic functionalities that exist in SNP and Variation Suite (SVS) for large-n DNASeq workflows; this includes large cohort analyses with case/control variables. The data you’ll see below is the publically available 1kG Phase 1 v3 Exome sequences from 1,092 individuals with… Read more »

Don’t miss the VarSeq user experience webcast tomorrow!

         November 4, 2014

We are shortly approaching the public launch (November 5th!) of our first clinical product, VarSeq. We could not have predicted how well the market would accept VarSeq – but we couldn’t be happier! For those of you who have not yet seen our newest product in action, I invite you to register for tomorrow’s webcast: The Golden Helix VarSeq User Experience.

Check out our newest t-shirts!

         October 30, 2014

As you might recall, we hosted our first annual t-shirt design contest this summer. We announced the winners, but kept the winning t-shirt designs themselves top secret until ASHG where we unveiled them day by day. But, if you did not attend ASHG last week, you are probably still on the edge of your seat. Well, luckily, I will reveal… Read more »

Final thoughts on ASHG14

         October 28, 2014

To make a long story short, we had a blast at ASHG14. The traffic at our booth was terrific. Every day we had scheduled presentations on VarSeq, SVS, and GenomeBrowse which were very well attended. And of course, there were our new t-shirts. The new designs were well received. If anything we promise to bring more next year. In particular more… Read more »

New Plugin for Ion Torrent Server

         October 21, 2014

Golden Helix is proud to announce the release of the Golden Helix GenomeBrowse Plugin for Ion Torrent server. The new plug-in enables adding selected BAM files from Torrent Server reports directly into GenomeBrowse. The BAM files remain on the torrent server and are streamed from the server on demand using your credentials. This feature allows GenomeBrowse users to visualize genomic… Read more »

A little known fact about Box Plots

         October 16, 2014

A helpful tool that is included in SVS, but many of our customers may not know about, is the ability to create Box Plots or box-and-whisker plots. These are effective visualizations for comparing groups of numerical data through the data quartiles. I’ll take you through a couple different cases with examples.

Variant Notation: In simplicity we find complexity

         October 9, 2014

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) notation — you know “G dot”, “P dot”, and “C dot”. HGVS has quickly become one of the most common ways to represent variants.  It’s no wonder that HGVS nomenclature is used so widely. It provides an easily readable, compact representation of a variant. Since it is… Read more »

ASHG Happenings

         October 8, 2014

It’s that time of year again. The mornings are chilly, the leaves are falling, and ASHG is right around the corner. This year will mark my very first ASHG and I am really looking forward to meeting some of the Golden Helix community! The team has been hard at work preparing for a great conference and I wanted to give you… Read more »

Entering the Clinical Testing Market with VarSeq

         September 25, 2014

The adoption of genetic services is key to our ability to provide personalized medicine in the future. The goal is to better diagnose diseases, predict their outcomes, and to choose the best possible care option for a patient. Our part here at Golden Helix is to essentially build the equivalent of an MRI for the genome. In this process the latest… Read more »

Top 3 Most Viewed Tutorials from Golden Helix

         September 12, 2014

Tutorials are ever-present in the world today, and for good reason. Why struggle through a complicated process yourself, when there is already a guide established to assist? While no one would suggest that a tutorial is the only way to complete a project, it is certainly a nice starting point. This rings true with genetic software as well. There are… Read more »

Tips and Tricks for Quality Control Metrics

         September 4, 2014

SVS offers options for performing many different QC functions on genomic data. This blog takes you through some of the most commonly applied filters for various analysis types. Filters for GWAS data vary depending on the type of association tests you are performing. A typical GWAS for a common variant usually requires filters to remove problematic or poorly called variants,… Read more »

False Positives in Big Data Analytics

         September 2, 2014

We had a lot to celebrate recently. Last year was the 300th anniversary of Jacob Bernoulli’s Ars Conjectandi. In this book he consolidated central ideas in probability theory, such as the very first version of the law of large numbers. It was also the 250th anniversary of  Bayes theorem named after Thomas Bayes (1701–1761), who first suggested using the theorem to update beliefs.

Updates to ClinVar and dbSNPs: Fresh charts for Cromonaughts!

         August 28, 2014

I’m sitting in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum basking in the incredible product of human innovation and the hard work of countless engineers. My volunteer tour guide started us off at the Wright brother’s fliers and made a point of saying it was only 65 years from lift off at Kitty Hawk to the landing of a man on the moon…. Read more »

Genomic Prediction and How it’s Used

         August 21, 2014

Golden Helix is excited to host a webinar on Tuesday August 26th discussing the Genomic Prediction methods which were recently integrated into the SVS software. Genomic prediction uses several pieces of information when calculating its results. Genetic information is used to predict the phenotype or trait for the individuals. The phenotypic trait data can be provided for a subset or for all… Read more »

Leveraging SVS for NGS Workflows

         August 19, 2014

Over the last decade, DNA sequencing has made vast technological improvements. With the cost of sequencing decreasing significantly, sequencing technology has become a product for the masses. The sequencing technology and programs that were once used exclusively by major research institutions are now becoming available in many research facilities around the globe. These tools produce large amounts of data sets… Read more »

RefSeq Genes: Updated to NCBI Provided Alignments and Why You Care

         August 14, 2014

You probably haven’t spent much time thinking about how we represent genes in a genomic reference sequence context. And by genes, I really mean transcripts since genes are just a collection of transcripts that produce the same product. But in fact, there is more complexity here than you ever really wanted to know about. Andrew Jesaitis covered some of this… Read more »

Runs of Homozygosity Updated

         August 12, 2014

For the SVS 8.2 release we decided to improve upon the existing ROH feature. The improvements include new parameters to define a run and a new clustering algorithm to aide in finding more stringent clusters of runs. The improvements were motivated by customer comments and a recent research paper by Zhang 2013, “cgaTOH: Extended Approach for Identifying Tracts of Homozygosity,”… Read more »