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search for low coverage regions on bam file

Trying to find regions with a coverage less than 9 in a BAM file, I used:

bedtools genomecov -bga -ibam infile.bam | awk '$4<9' > lessthan9cov.bed

The output file is something like:

scaffold1    12861    12866    7
scaffold1    12866    12877    1
scaffold1    12877    12896    3
scaffold1    31141    31193    8
scaffold2    31193    31229    5
..

This output has too many rows. Is there a way to have a file which for any continuous region with any coverage less than 9, has a single row?

The desired file should have:

scaffold1    12861    12896
scaffold1    31141    31193
scaffold2    31193    31229

Thank you

bedtools genomecov awk coverage
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updated by Ram Ram • written by mary • mary

Is your genomecov command correct? Don't you need to specify genome file?

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written by PoGibas PoGibas

As much as I know, when working with BAM files, you do not need to specify genome file.

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written by mary • mary

2 answers

Yes, there is a way.

  1. Use awk to filter regions with wanted coverage
  2. Use bedtools merge to merge those filtered regions

Not tested solution (using OP's code):

bedtools genomecov -bga -ibam infile.bam -g ${fileGenome} | 
    awk '$4 < 9' |
    bedtools merge -i - \
> RESULT.bed
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written by PoGibas PoGibas

Thanks, neat and helpful! just the -i option should be removed

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written by mary • mary

Thanks, fixed.

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written by PoGibas PoGibas

Can this code be modified in a way that low coverage regions of both ends in each contig would not be listed?

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written by mary • mary

What is end of the contig? 1kb?

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written by PoGibas PoGibas

the original bam file has some mapped scaffolds, each with a defined length. I want to have low coverage regions but not when they are near the beginning or at the end of a scaffold. for example, if scaffold 1 is 2000 bp and has a low coverage region at 4-26 bp or another one at 1900-190 bp these regions would not be outputted to the BED file.

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written by mary • mary

using samtools depth:

samtools depth  in.bam | awk 'BEGIN {prevc="";prevp=0;prevd=0;start=0;} {c=$1;p=int($2);d=int($3);if(NR>1 && !(prevc==c && prevp+1==p && prevd==d)) { if(pred<9) printf("%s\t%d\t%d\t%d\n",prevc,start,prevp,prevd);start=p;} prevc=c;prevp=p;prevd=d; } END {if(pred<9) printf("%s\t%d\t%d\t%d\n",prevc,start,prevp,prevd);}'
3   10192625    10192629    12
3   10192630    10192633    11
3   10192634    10192640    12
3   10192641    10192641    13
3   10192642    10192647    12
3   10192648    10192650    10

depends of your needs, you might add the option '-a' (twice) to samtools:

   -a                  output all positions (including zero depth)
   -a -a (or -aa)      output absolutely all positions, including unused ref. sequences
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written by Pierre Lindenbaum Pierre Lindenbaum

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