In our SVS 8.6.0 release, we updated our Annotate and Filter Variants feature to utilize our powerful VarSeq annotations. Annotations can be run against gene, interval, variant, and tabular tracks, including RefSeq, ClinVar, CADD, OMIM and OncoMD. The new streamlined dialog allows users to select track specific options and to set up custom filters. While our public annotation repository has… Read more »
Gabe Rudy’s webcast yesterday, Big Data at Golden Helix: Scaling to Meet the Demand of Clinical and Research Genomics, was a huge success with well over 300 registered. In today’s blog post, I wanted to recap the Q&A session with Gabe. If you missed the webcast, check it out! Question: What is the end goal for an application like Warehouse? Answer: The… Read more »
Big data is here, but fear not, you don’t need a Hadoop cluster to analyze your genomes or your cohorts of tens of thousands of samples! It turns out, for the kind of algorithms employed in variant annotation and filtering, running optimized local programs is often faster anyway. As we support our diverse customer base, we have definitely seen the… Read more »
Question: Now that I’ve added annotation sources for my sample, filtered down to a list of interesting variants, flagged those variants and generated a clinical report, can I save or copy the annotation sources and filters for use on another sample? Short Answer: Yes! Long Answer: VarSeq was created with ease and efficiency in mind. In VarSeq, once you’ve defined… Read more »
Every month hundreds of clinicians and researchers access the variety of free resources on the Golden Helix website. Our resource library hosts eBooks, webcasts and tutorials to keep the community apprised of new methods, informed on best practices and to help our customers get the most out of their software purchase. Here is a list of the 5 most watched webcasts… Read more »
Since 1999, Bonei Olam has been providing large-scale funding for fertility treatment and research. The non-profit’s mission is to provide whatever means or resources necessary to help childless couples achieve the dream of parenthood. Today, it is recognized in the worldwide medical arena for its leadership role at the forefront of reproductive medicine, research and technology. Specifically, Bonei Olam has… Read more »
Variant Normalization: Underappreciated Critical Infrastructure It may surprise you to learn that every variant in the human genome has an infinite number of representations! Of course, although true, I’m being a bit hyperbolic to prove a point. Even seemingly simple mutations like single letter substitutions are legitimately represented differently in the local context of other mutations that can be described… Read more »
Whole exome sequencing workflows using SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) was presented in a recent webcast, by Dr. Robert Hamilton from the Hospital for Sick Kids. In particular, he performed some filtering on his data to look for only heterozygous variants in his sample of interest, removed variants with allele frequency less than 0.005% based off of the ExAC Variant Frequency… Read more »
When the new human reference genome was released over two years ago, it was hailed as a significant step forward for next generation sequencing. Compared to GRCh37, the new GRCH38 reference assembly fixed gaps, repaired incorrect sequences and offered access to sections of the genome that had been previously unaccounted for. Despite these improvements, adoption of the new assembly has… Read more »
The power of VSPipeline is in it’s ability to automate VarSeq workflows. Using VarSeq to create a pipeline template is great because it allows you to dial in the applied filters as well as interactively organize the annotations and applied algorithms. Automating a workflow with VSPipeline is straightforward when beginning with an existing project. However, there are several steps that… Read more »
There used to be much energy expended at conferences, bioinformatics forums and even publications about what was the better strategy for interpreting variants of clinical significance: Rule-based filtering and classification mechanisms or rank-based prioritization through all-encompassing “pathogenicity” scores. Both have shown to be effective. Rule-based systems, as exemplified in this filtering diagram in Baylor’s ground-breaking paper on clinical whole-exome sequencing… Read more »
Submit directly to N-of-One from VarSeq If you or your lab uses N-of-One solutions for clinical annotations, here’s some good news: You can now submit directly to N-of-One from VarSeq! N-of-One’s set of preferred transcripts may differ from those outputted by our algorithms in VarSeq, so our solution was built with that in mind. Our slick, easy to use, and… Read more »
ICGC’s database is now available For quite a while, COSMIC has been synonymous with the catalog of “known somatic mutations”. It is the ClinVar of cancer mutations and invests heavily in “expert curation” (having human experts read papers and pull out references to published somatic mutations). But it turns out there is a new kid on the block, and he… Read more »
Did you know you can analyze your Genotyping by Sequencing (GBS) data in SVS? Well you can! You can combine tools for both GWAS quality control and analysis with tools for NGS data analysis to either identify SNPs in your dataset or to identify differences between populations or sub-species. If your species has a reference sequence or even if you… Read more »
Wednesday, April 6th 12:00 pm EDT As the number of samples and associated data volume in a testing lab increases, it becomes imperative for labs to leverage state of the art warehousing technology that not only organizes data, but also aides and enables researchers and clinicians to perform further analysis, and ongoing research. Built on the algorithms and high-performance storage… Read more »
Headed to Tampa! For the first time, Golden Helix will be attending the Annual Clinical Genetics (ACMG) meeting. This year, the meeting is being held in Tampa, Florida and we are excited to visit with our customers and meet new people in the field! Where to Find Us You can find the Golden Helix team in booth #435 in the… Read more »
Benjamin Darbro, MD, PhD at the University of Iowa, uses VarSeq® software for Clinical Testing Founded by Hans Zellweger in the 1960’s, The Shivanand R. Patil Cytogenetics and Molecular Lab at the University of Iowa has a long history of clinical testing, seeing 45 years of advancements. Today, the lab is mainly focused on oncology, pre and post-natal genetics testing… Read more »
As VarSeq continues its adoption amongst clinical labs and researchers looking for reproducible workflows for variant annotation, filtering and interpretation, we have continued to prioritize the addition of features to assess the quality of the upstream data at a variant, coverage and now sample level. The Importance of Quality Assurance Sample prep and sequencing problems are difficult to detect through the analysis… Read more »
Scaling is in our DNA: Making Genomics Accessible One of the things I absolutely love about the work we do at Golden Helix is keeping up with the changes in data analysis driven by the iterative and generational leaps in technology. But one thing has always been a constant since day one: we break preconceived notions of what scale of… Read more »
Yesterday, it was my pleasure to share in a live webcast our integrated solution for genetic data warehousing, VSWarehouse. If you missed the webcast live, feel free to check out the recording. Although we had a great set of questions at the end of our presentation, we didn’t have time to answer all of them, so here is a selection of… Read more »
