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Adding coverage data to your VCF

pVACseq is able to parse coverage information directly from the VCF. The expected annotation format is outlined below.

Type

VCF Sample

Format Fields

Tumor DNA Coverage

single-sample VCF or sample_name

AD, DP, and AF

Tumor RNA Coverage

single-sample VCF or sample_name

RAD, RDP, and RAF

Normal DNA Coverage

--normal-sample-name

AD, DP, and AF

Tumor DNA Coverage

If the VCF is a single-sample VCF, pVACseq assumes that this sample is the tumor sample. If the VCF is a multi-sample VCF, pVACseq will look for the sample using the sample_name parameter and treat that sample as the tumor sample.

For this tumor sample, the tumor DNA depth is determined from the DP format field. The tumor DNA VAF is determined from the AF field. If the VCF does not contain a AF format field, the tumor DNA VAF is calculated from the AD and DP fields by dividing the allele count by the total read depth.

Tumor RNA Coverage

If the VCF is a single-sample VCF, pVACseq assumes that this sample is the tumor sample. If the VCF is a multi-sample VCF, pVACseq will look for the sample using the sample_name parameter and treat that sample as the tumor sample.

For this tumor sample, the tumor RNA depth is determined from the RDP format field. The tumor RNA VAF is determined from the RAF field. If the VCF does not contain a RAF format field, the tumor RNA VAF is calculated from the RAD and RDP fields by dividing the allele count by the total read depth.

Normal DNA Coverage

To parse normal DNA coverage information, the input VCF to pVACseq will need to be a multi-sample (tumor/normal) VCF, with one sample being the tumor sample, and the other the matched normal sample. The tumor sample is identified by the sample_name parameter while the normal sample can be specified with --normal-sample-name option.

For this normal sample, the normal DNA depth is determined from the DP format field. The normal DNA VAF is determined from the AF field. If the VCF does not contain a AF format field, the normal DNA VAF is calculated from the AD and DP fields by dividing the allele count by the total read depth.

Using the vcf-readcount-annotator to add coverage information to your VCF

Some variant callers will already have added coverage information to your VCF. However, if your VCF doesn’t contain coverage information or if you need to add coverage information for additional samples or for RNA-seq data, you can use the vcf-readcount-annotator to do so. The vcf-readcount-annotator will take the output from bam-readcount and use it to add readcounts to your VCF.

bam-readcount needs to be run separately for snvs and indels so it is recommended to first split multi-allelic sites by using a tool such as vt decompose.

Installing vt

The vt tool suite can be installed by following the instructions on their page.

Installing bam-readcount

The vcf-readcount-annotator will add readcount information from bam-readcount output files to your VCF. Therefore, you will first need to run bam-readcount to obtain a file of readcounts for your variants.

Follow the installation instructions on the bam-readcount GitHub page.

Installing the vcf-readcount-annotator

The vcf-readcount-annotator is part of the vatools package. Please visit vatools.org for more details on this package. You can install this package by running:

pip install vatools

Running vt decompose

Example vt decompose command

vt decompose -s <input_vcf> -o <decomposed_vcf>

Running bam-readcount

bam-readcount uses a bam file and site list regions file as input. The site lists are created from your decomposed VCF, one for snvs and one for indels. Snvs and indels are then run separately through bam-readcount using the same bam. Indel regions must be run in a special insertion-centric mode.

Example bam-readcount command

bam-readcount -f <reference_fasta> -l <site_list> <bam_file> [-i] [-b 20]

The -i option must be used when running the indels site list in order to process indels in insertion-centric mode.

A minimum base quality of 20 is recommended which can be enabled using the -b 20 option.

The mgibio/bam_readcount_helper-cwl Docker container contains a bam_readcount_helper.py script that will create the snv and indel site list files from a VCF and run bam-readcount. Information on that Docker container can be found here: dockerhub mgibio/bam_readcount_helper-cwl.

Example bam_readcount_helper.py command

/usr/bin/python /usr/bin/bam_readcount_helper.py \
<decomposed_vcf> <sample_name> <reference_fasta> <bam_file> NOPREFIX <output_dir>

This will write two bam-readcount files to the <output_dir>: <sample_name>_bam_readcount_snv.tsv and <sample_name>_bam_readcount_indel.tsv, containing readcounts for the snv and indel positions, respectively.

Running the vcf-readcount-annotator

The readcounts for snvs and indels are then added to your VCF separately, by running the vcf-readcount-annotator twice.

Example vcf-readcount-annotator commands

vcf-readcount-annotator <decomposed_vcf> <snv_bam_readcount_file> <DNA|RNA> \
-s <sample_name> -t snv -o <snv_annotated_vcf>

vcf-readcount-annotator <snv_annotated_vcf> <indel_bam_readcount_file> <DNA|RNA> \
-s <sample_name> -t indel -o <annotated_vcf>

The data type DNA or RNA identifies whether you are annotating DNA or RNA readcount. DNA readcount annotations will be written to the AD/DP/AF format fields while RNA readcount annotations will be written to the RAD/RDP/RAF format fields. Please see the VAtools documentation for more information.