Page Comparison

...

If you happen to be working with a model organism with extensive external data (ESPECIALLY HUMAN), then there are even more sophisticated tools like the Broad Institute's GATK that can improve both sensitivity and specificity of your variant calls.

Keep in mind that this type of trio (or familial) analysis has been exceptionally powerful for identifying rare childhood diseases.  The most prominent publication in this area is this first example of whole exome sequencing saving a life.  There are many other publications since and some review articles such as this one.  Familial analysis is critical for rare, autosomal dominant diseases because, almost by definition, the mutations may be "private" to each individual so we can't look across big populations to find one single causative mutation.  But within families, we can identify bad private mutations in single genes or pathways and then look across populations to find commonality at the gene or pathway level to explain a phenotype.

Example: The CEU Trio from the 1000 Genomes Project

Many example datasets are available from the 1000 genomes project specifically for method evaluation and training. We'll explore a trio (mom, dad, child). Their accession numbers are NA12892, NA12891, and NA12878 respectively. To make the exercise run more quickly, we'll focus on data only from chromosome 20.

All the data we'll use is located here:

$BI/ngs_course/human_variation

...

...