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Finding variants common to subset of samples in multi-sample VCF

I have a VCF file generated from following the GATK tutorial and using the GenotypeGVCFs to jointly genotype each of my 9 samples. I would like to extract SNPs that are unique to 3 of the 9 samples, as in common variants that are only found in those 3 samples.

Does anyone have an example for how to do this? I've tried reading through SNPsift and SelectVariants in GATK, but I can only see how to find SNPs unique to each sample, rather than a subset of samples. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

variant snp vcf
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updated by sbstevenlee • sbstevenlee • written by dmp • dmp

1 answer

If you are a Python user, below is a Python API solution using the pyvcf submodule from the fuc package I wrote:

Assume you have the following data:

>>> from fuc import pyvcf
>>> data = {
...     'CHROM': ['chr1', 'chr1', 'chr1', 'chr1'],
...     'POS': [100, 101, 102, 103],
...     'ID': ['.', '.', '.', '.'],
...     'REF': ['G', 'T', 'T', 'C'],
...     'ALT': ['A', 'C', 'A', 'A'],
...     'QUAL': ['.', '.', '.', '.'],
...     'FILTER': ['.', '.', '.', '.'],
...     'INFO': ['.', '.', '.', '.'],
...     'FORMAT': ['GT', 'GT', 'GT', 'GT'],
...     'Sample1': ['0/1', '0/0', '0/0', '0/1'],
...     'Sample2': ['1/1', '0/0', '0/1', '0/1'],
...     'Sample3': ['0/1', '0/0', '0/0', '0/1'],
...     'Sample4': ['0/0', '0/0', '0/0', '0/1'],
...     'Sample5': ['0/0', '0/1', '0/1', '0/0'],
...     'Sample6': ['0/0', '0/0', '0/0', '0/0'],
...     'Sample7': ['0/0', '0/0', '1/1', '0/0'],
...     'Sample8': ['0/0', '0/0', '0/1', '0/0'],
...     'Sample9': ['0/0', '0/0', '0/1', '0/0'],
... }
>>> vf = pyvcf.VcfFrame.from_dict([], data)
>>> vf.df
  CHROM  POS ID REF ALT QUAL FILTER INFO FORMAT Sample1 Sample2 Sample3 Sample4 Sample5 Sample6 Sample7 Sample8 Sample9
0  chr1  100  .   G   A    .      .    .     GT     0/1     1/1     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0
1  chr1  101  .   T   C    .      .    .     GT     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0
2  chr1  102  .   T   A    .      .    .     GT     0/0     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/1     0/0     1/1     0/1     0/1
3  chr1  103  .   C   A    .      .    .     GT     0/1     0/1     0/1     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0

If you want to extract variants that are only found in Sample1, Sample2, and Sample3, you can do the following:

>>> # First select variants that appear in all three of the samples
>>> vf = vf.filter_sampall(samples=['Sample1', 'Sample2', 'Sample3'])
>>> vf.df
  CHROM  POS ID REF ALT QUAL FILTER INFO FORMAT Sample1 Sample2 Sample3 Sample4 Sample5 Sample6 Sample7 Sample8 Sample9
0  chr1  100  .   G   A    .      .    .     GT     0/1     1/1     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0
1  chr1  103  .   C   A    .      .    .     GT     0/1     0/1     0/1     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0
>>> # Then remove any variants that are not unique to the three samples
>>> vf = vf.filter_sampany(samples=['Sample4', 'Sample5', 'Sample6', 'Sample7', 'Sample8', 'Sample9'], opposite=True)
>>> vf.df
  CHROM  POS ID REF ALT QUAL FILTER INFO FORMAT Sample1 Sample2 Sample3 Sample4 Sample5 Sample6 Sample7 Sample8 Sample9
0  chr1  100  .   G   A    .      .    .     GT     0/1     1/1     0/1     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0     0/0

You can easily read and write VCF files:

vf = pyvcf.VcfFrame.from_file('in.vcf')
vf.to_file('out.vcf')

Let me know if you have any questions.

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written by sbstevenlee • sbstevenlee

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