[Bioc-devel] zero-width ranges representing insertions

Valerie Obenchain vobencha at fredhutch.org
Fri Mar 20 00:04:11 CET 2015


On 03/16/2015 05:31 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
> On 03/16/2015 04:06 PM, Michael Lawrence wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 3:12 PM, Robert Castelo <robert.castelo at upf.edu
>> <mailto:robert.castelo at upf.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     +1 IMO BioC could adopt the zero-width ranges representation for
>>     insertions, adapting readVcf(), writeVcf(), XtraSNPlocs.*, etc., to
>>     deal with each corresponding beast, be VCF, dbSNP or the like. Who
>>     knows, VCF could also change their representation in the future and
>>     it'll be a headache to update the affected packages if we decide to
>>     keep using its insertion representation internally to store variant
>>     ranges in BioC.
>>
>>
>> That would break just about every tool, so let's hope not. There's a
>> bunch of code on top of Bioc that currently depends on the current
>> representation. For example, zero width ranges do not overlap anything,
>> so they need special treatment to e.g. detect whether an insertion falls
>> within a gene. There are real benefits to keeping the representation of
>> indels consistent with the rest of the field (VCF). There was much
>> thought put into this.
>
> Note that findOverlaps() now handles zero-width ranges.

I've had a chance to take a closer look at how VA handles zero-width ranges.

Previously, both predictCoding() and locateVariants() treated zero-width 
ranges as width 1 (start decremented to equal end). In VA 1.13.42 this 
has been changed for predictCoding() so now zero width are dropped. The 
function internals expect REF and ALT to conform with the vcf specs and 
zero width ranges aren't used. So, it seemed wise to drop the zero-width 
for now.

locateVariants() remains the same because this is more general. I think 
it's still useful to identify where a zero width range falls with 
respect to gene features.


>
> Straight use of findOverlaps() on the ranges of a VCF object leads to
> some subtle problems on insertions. For example predictCoding() (which
> I guess uses findOverlaps() internally) reports strange things for
> these 2 insertions (1 right before and 1 right after the stop codon):


This output is actually fine. The VARCODON values may be slightly 
misleading but the data are correct. predictCoding() only computes amino 
acid sequences for snps or indels that conform to the 'groups of 3' 
idea. The substitution or deletion must result in the sequence being 
divisible by 3 otherwise there is a partial codon at the end that must 
be inferred (consider all possible combinations) and then one must be 
chosen (consensus). The code does not currently do this and I'm not sure 
there is common agreement on how to do it.

This GRanges has a snv followed by 1, 2, and 3 base pair insertions:

>>> rowRanges(vcf)
>> GRanges object with 4 ranges and 5 metadata columns:
>>           seqnames         ranges strand | paramRangeID            REF
>>              <Rle>      <IRanges>  <Rle> |    <logical> <DNAStringSet>
>>       snv    chr20 [77055, 77055]      * |         <NA>              T
>>   1bp ins    chr20 [77054, 77055]      * |         <NA>             AT
>>   2bp ins    chr20 [77054, 77055]      * |         <NA>             AT
>>   3bp ins    chr20 [77054, 77055]      * |         <NA>             AT
>>                          ALT      QUAL      FILTER
>>           <DNAStringSetList> <numeric> <character>
>>       snv                  G        70        PASS
>>   1bp ins                ATC        70        PASS
>>   2bp ins               ATCG        70        PASS
>>   3bp ins              ATCGG        70        PASS
>>   -------
>>   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome; no seqlengths

Coding changes are computed for the snv and 3bp insertion but the others 
are marked as 'frameshift'. Previously when an indel couldn't be 
translated the VARCODON was the same as the REFCODON which may have been 
confusing (was intended to mean nothing has changed). I've changed this 
so VARCODON is now missing (like VARAA) when it can't be translated.

>
>>> predictCoding(vcf, txdb, Hsapiens)
>> GRanges object with 4 ranges and 17 metadata columns:
>>           seqnames         ranges strand | paramRangeID            REF
>>              <Rle>      <IRanges>  <Rle> |    <logical> <DNAStringSet>
>>       snv    chr20 [77055, 77055]      + |         <NA>              T
>>   1bp ins    chr20 [77054, 77055]      + |         <NA>             AT
>>   2bp ins    chr20 [77054, 77055]      + |         <NA>             AT
>>   3bp ins    chr20 [77054, 77055]      + |         <NA>             AT
>>                          ALT      QUAL      FILTER      varAllele     CDSLOC
>>           <DNAStringSetList> <numeric> <character> <DNAStringSet>  <IRanges>
>>       snv                  G        70        PASS              G [468, 468]
>>   1bp ins                ATC        70        PASS            ATC [467, 468]
>>   2bp ins               ATCG        70        PASS           ATCG [467, 468]
>>   3bp ins              ATCGG        70        PASS          ATCGG [467, 468]
>>              PROTEINLOC   QUERYID        TXID         CDSID      GENEID
>>           <IntegerList> <integer> <character> <IntegerList> <character>
>>       snv           156         1       70477        206101      245938
>>   1bp ins           156         2       70477        206101      245938
>>   2bp ins           156         3       70477        206101      245938
>>   3bp ins           156         4       70477        206101      245938
>>             CONSEQUENCE       REFCODON       VARCODON         REFAA
>>                <factor> <DNAStringSet> <DNAStringSet> <AAStringSet>
>>       snv nonsynonymous            AAT            AAG             N
>>   1bp ins    frameshift            AAT                            N
>>   2bp ins    frameshift            AAT                            N
>>   3bp ins nonsynonymous            AAT         AATCGG             N
>>                   VARAA
>>           <AAStringSet>
>>       snv             K
>>   1bp ins
>>   2bp ins
>>   3bp ins            NR
>>   -------
>>   seqinfo: 1 sequence from an unspecified genome; no seqlengths


PROTEINLOC is the codon number in the coding sequence. These are the cds 
regions:

>>> cds
>> GRanges object with 2 ranges and 3 metadata columns:
>>       seqnames         ranges strand |    cds_id    cds_name exon_rank
>>          <Rle>      <IRanges>  <Rle> | <integer> <character> <integer>
>>   [1]    chr20 [68351, 68408]      + |    206100        <NA>         1
>>   [2]    chr20 [76646, 77058]      + |    206101        <NA>         2
>>   -------
>>   seqinfo: 93 sequences (1 circular) from hg19 genome

There are 157 codons, position 77055 falls in the second to last codon, 
so 156.

>>> sum(width(cds)) / 3
>> [1] 157
>>>


Val





>
> library(TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene)
> txdb <- TxDb.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19.knownGene
>
>  > cdsBy(txdb, use.names=TRUE)$uc002wcw.3
> GRanges object with 2 ranges and 3 metadata columns:
>        seqnames         ranges strand |    cds_id    cds_name exon_rank
>           <Rle>      <IRanges>  <Rle> | <integer> <character> <integer>
>    [1]    chr20 [68351, 68408]      + |    206100        <NA>         1
>    [2]    chr20 [76646, 77058]      + |    206101        <NA>         2
>    -------
>    seqinfo: 93 sequences (1 circular) from hg19 genome
>
>
> library(VariantAnnotation)
>  > rowRanges(vcf)  # hand-made VCF
> GRanges object with 2 ranges and 5 metadata columns:
>                          seqnames         ranges strand | paramRangeID
>                             <Rle>      <IRanges>  <Rle> |     <factor>
>    ins before stop codon    chr20 [77055, 77055]      * |         <NA>
>     ins after stop codon    chr20 [77058, 77058]      * |         <NA>
>                                     REF                ALT      QUAL
> FILTER
>                          <DNAStringSet> <DNAStringSetList> <numeric>
> <character>
>    ins before stop codon              T                 TG        70
> PASS
>     ins after stop codon              A                 AG        70
> PASS
>    -------
>    seqinfo: 1 sequence from hg19 genome
>
> Calling predictCoding():
>
>  > library(BSgenome.Hsapiens.UCSC.hg19)
>  > predictCoding(vcf, txdb, Hsapiens)
> GRanges object with 2 ranges and 17 metadata columns:
>                          seqnames         ranges strand | paramRangeID
>                             <Rle>      <IRanges>  <Rle> |     <factor>
>    ins before stop codon    chr20 [77055, 77055]      + |         <NA>
>     ins after stop codon    chr20 [77058, 77058]      + |         <NA>
>                                     REF                ALT      QUAL
> FILTER
>                          <DNAStringSet> <DNAStringSetList> <numeric>
> <character>
>    ins before stop codon              T                 TG        70
> PASS
>     ins after stop codon              A                 AG        70
> PASS
>                               varAllele     CDSLOC    PROTEINLOC   QUERYID
>                          <DNAStringSet>  <IRanges> <IntegerList> <integer>
>    ins before stop codon             TG [468, 468]           156         1
>     ins after stop codon             AG [471, 471]           157         2
>                                 TXID         CDSID      GENEID CONSEQUENCE
>                          <character> <IntegerList> <character>    <factor>
>    ins before stop codon       70477                    245938  frameshift
>     ins after stop codon       70477                    245938  frameshift
>                                REFCODON       VARCODON         REFAA
>                          <DNAStringSet> <DNAStringSet> <AAStringSet>
>    ins before stop codon            AAT            AAT
>     ins after stop codon            TAA            TAA
>                                  VARAA
>                          <AAStringSet>
>    ins before stop codon
>     ins after stop codon
>    -------
>    seqinfo: 1 sequence from hg19 genome
>
> PROTEINLOC, REFCODON, VARCODON, and CONSEQUENCE don't seem quite right
> to me. Could be that my hand-made vcf is missing some important data
> needeed by predictCoding() though...
>
> H.
>
>
>>
>>     robert.
>>
>>     On 3/16/15 9:00 PM, Kasper Daniel Hansen wrote:
>>     > There would be a LOT of value  in having core packages use
>> exactly the
>>      > same representation; I don't have any opinion about which one is
>>      > best.
>>      >
>>      > Kasper
>>      >
>>      > On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 3:38 PM, Hervé Pagès
>>     <hpages at fredhutch.org <mailto:hpages at fredhutch.org>
>>      > <mailto:hpages at fredhutch.org> <mailto:hpages at fredhutch.org>>
>> wrote:
>>      >
>>      > On 03/16/2015 09:22 AM, Michael Lawrence wrote:
>>      >
>>      > Yes, I think it would make sense for the Xtra package to follow
>> the
>>      > established convention in VariantAnnotation/VCF.
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > I don't know. I agree it would be nice to use a more consistent
>>      > representation of insertions across the software but I'm not
>>      > convinced we should necessarily follow the VCF way, which is to
>>      > include the base before the event in the ref and alt alleles as
>> well
>>      > as in the reported range.
>>      >
>>      > Note that there doesn't seem to be any consensus in the broader
>>      > Bioinformatics community either. For example dbSNP and HGVS report
>>      > the range that corresponds to the 2 flanking nucleotides but they
>>      > don't include these nucleotides in the ref or alt alleles. VCF
>> does
>>      > the same as GFF3 which says "start equals end and the implied
>> site is
>>      > to the right of the indicated base" except that VCF wants to treat
>>      > events that occur at position 1 in a special way. In that case VCF
>>      > says the base *after* the event should be included (seems like the
>>      > VCF authors want to avoid both: empty ranges and also ranges that
>>      > start at POS 0). BTW it doesn't seem that
>>      > VariantAnnotation::isInsertion() is aware of that special
>> treatment.
>>      >
>>      > UCSC uses a zero-width range, and so does the XtraSNPlocs.*
>>      > packages. The advantage of this representation is its simplicity.
>>      > There is no special cases. It also reflects the notion that an
>>      > insertion is a replacement of an empty string with a non-empty
>>      > string. No need to include flanking nucleotides in the
>> representation
>>      > (which is artificial and distorts the "real" alt allele).
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > H.
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 9:16 AM, Robert Castelo
>>      > <robert.castelo at upf.edu <mailto:robert.castelo at upf.edu>
>>     <mailto:robert.castelo at upf.edu> <mailto:robert.castelo at upf.edu>>
>> wrote:
>>      >
>>      > dear devel people, specially Val and Michael,
>>      >
>>      > Hervé has recently added an annotation package that includes
>>      > non-SNVs variants from dbSNP, it is called:
>>      >
>>      > library(XtraSNPlocs.Hsapiens.dbSNP141.GRCh38)
>>      >
>>      > if you execute the corresponding example you'll see the kind of
>>      > information stored in the package:
>>      >
>>      > example(XtraSNPlocs.Hsapiens.dbSNP141.GRCh38)
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > if you pay attention to the following case:
>>      >
>>      > my_snps1[1:2] GRanges object with 2 ranges and 3 metadata columns:
>>      > seqnames               ranges strand |   RefSNP_id alleles <Rle>
>>      > <IRanges>  <Rle> | <character> <character> [1]       22 [10513380,
>>      > 10513380]      - | rs386831164         -/T [2]       22 [10519678,
>>      > 10519677]      + |  rs71286731       -/TTT ref_allele
>> <DNAStringSet>
>>      > [1]              T [2]              - ------- seqinfo: 25
>> sequences
>>      > (1 circular) from GRCh38 genome
>>      >
>>      > you'll see the first variant (rs386831164) is a deletion of one
>>      > nucleotide and the second (rs71286731) is an insertion of three
>>      > nucleotides (TTT).
>>      >
>>      > it struck me that the ranges representing the insertion had an
>> start
>>      > position one nucleotide larger than then and i contacted Hervé
>>      > thinking that this was a mistake. however, i've learned from
>> him that
>>      > these are so-called "zero-width" ranges and they actually allow to
>>      > distinguish insertions from every other type of variant without
>> the
>>      > need to know anything about the reference or the alternate allele.
>>      >
>>      > currently, the VCF specification 4.2 (http://samtools.github.io/
>>      > hts-specs/VCFv4.2.pdf page 5) uses the nucleotide composition
>> of the
>>      > REF column to help distinguishing insertions by including the
>>      > flanking nucleotide of the inserted sequence. As a result,
>>      > VariantAnnotation::readVcf() produces ranges that mimic this
>>      > standard having identical start and end positions leading to
>> 1-width
>>      > ranges:
>>      >
>>      > fl <- system.file("extdata", "CEUtrio.vcf.bgz",
>>      > package="VariantFiltering") vcf <- readVcf(fl, genome="hg19")
>>      > rowRanges(vcf[isInsertion(vcf), ])[1:2] GRanges object with 2
>> ranges
>>      > and 5 metadata columns: seqnames               ranges strand |
>>      > paramRangeID <Rle>            <IRanges> <Rle> |     <factor>
>>      > rs11474033       20 [45093330, 45093330]      * | <NA>
>>      > 20:47592746_G/GGC       20 [47592746, 47592746]      * |
>>      > <NA> REF                ALT      QUAL      FILTER <DNAStringSet>
>>      > <DNAStringSetList> <numeric> <character> rs11474033              C
>>      > CTTCT   2901.12           . 20:47592746_G/GGC              G
>>      > GGC    608.88           . ------- seqinfo: 84 sequences from hg19
>>      > genome
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > table(width(rowRanges(vcf[isInsertion(vcf), ])))
>>      >
>>      > 1 78
>>      >
>>      > i would like to ask whether it would make sense to harmonize
>> the way
>>      > in which dbSNP insertions and variants are imported into
>> Bioconductor
>>      > by making VariantAnnotation::readVcf() to produce zero-width
>> ranges
>>      > for insertion variants. this not a feature request, i only
>> would like
>>      > to know what whether there is a particular reason not to use the
>>      > available zero-width ranges that seem to be implemented for this
>>      > purpose.
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > cheers,
>>      >
>>      > robert.
>>      >
>>      > _______________________________________________
>>      > Bioc-devel at r-project.org <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org>
>>     <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org> <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org>
>>     mailing
>>      > list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>>      > <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel>
>>     <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel>
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>      >
>>      > _______________________________________________
>>      > Bioc-devel at r-project.org <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org>
>>     <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org> <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org>
>>     mailing
>>      > list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>>      > <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel>
>>     <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel>
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > -- Hervé Pagès
>>      >
>>      > Program in Computational Biology Division of Public Health
>> Sciences
>>      > Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center 1100 Fairview Ave. N,
>> M1-B514
>>      > P.O. Box 19024 Seattle, WA 98109-1024
>>      >
>>      > E-mail: hpages at fredhutch.org <mailto:hpages at fredhutch.org>
>>     <mailto:hpages at fredhutch.org> <mailto:hpages at fredhutch.org> Phone:
>>      > (206) 667-5791 <tel:%28206%29%20667-5791>
>>     <tel:%28206%29%20667-5791> <tel:%28206%29%20667-5791> Fax:    (206)
>>     667-1319
>>      > <tel:%28206%29%20667-1319> <tel:%28206%29%20667-1319>
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > _______________________________________________
>>      > Bioc-devel at r-project.org <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org>
>>     <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org> <mailto:Bioc-devel at r-project.org>
>>     mailing
>>      > list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>>      > <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel>
>>     <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel>
>>      >
>>      >
>>
>>
>>
>



More information about the Bioc-devel mailing list