ANNOVAR FAQ

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) are documented in this page.

1. How to report a bug or to ask a question?
2. How to annotate variants in VCF file?
3. Why my run of gene-based annotation differ slightly from those shown in website?
4. Why ANNOVAR produced different non-synonymous SNP annotations than another software?
5. Why ANNOVAR says "WARNING: A total of 7 sequences cannot be found in mRNA.fa file"?
6. It should be amino acid A in this position but ANNOVAR reports C in this position!
7. Why ANNOVAR reports a 3-bp deletion as frameshift deletion?
8. Why ANNOVAR produced different non-synoymous SNP annotations than UCSC Genome Browser?
9. Why ANNOVAR reports T182A,T190A,T300A as the amino acid change but another web server reports only T300A?
10. Why ANNOVAR reports c.C100T when my input is G to A change?
11. Why ANNOVAR reports c.T5997G when my input is T to C change in chr14:31582550-31582550 in hg19 coordinate?
12. Why ANNOVAR reports p.P265delinsPQ in the output?
13. Why some splicing variants have no splicing annotation?
14. Why my mutation gets lost by ANNOVAR?
15. Why ANNOVAR reports "unknown" in exonic_variant_function?
16. Why ANNOVAR reports the same function for two different mutations in two sites?
17. Why ANNOVAR complains that "wildtype base is not part of the allele description" in filter-based annotation?
18. Why ANNOVAR complains "exonic SNPs have WRONG reference alleles " in gene-based annotation?
19. Why FASTA sequence in ANNOVAR differ from those in public databases?
20. Why ANNOVAR's TFBS annotation differ from what I have from another web server?
21. Can ANNOVAR support other non-synonymous mutation annotation methods besides SIFT?
22. Why the SIFT scores in ANNOVAR differ from those obtained from SIFT website?
23. How to infer base-level GERP scores and phastCons scores in ANNOVAR?
24. Can ANNOVAR identify all SNPs annotated within dbSNP in a given region (say chr1:3751541-3751607)?
25. How to handle 1000 Genomes Project variation data in hg19 coordinate?
26. How to annotate simple repeat regions in human genome?
27. How to handle database file in VCF format?
28. How to handle E. coli, Arabidopsis thaliana and other genomes not in UCSC?
29. Can ANNOVAR support GENCODE or other gene annotation systems?
30. What is the difference of dominant and recessive model in auto_annovar?
31. Why the total number of homozygous and heterozygous variants is more than the number of variant site?
32. What is the "discordant sequence length" warning?
33. Can ANNOVAR handle IUPAC code in input?
34. Can ANNOVAR handle genotype calls in input?
35. How to handle two very close SNPs in the same codon?
36. How to select the X-way phastCons conservation track in ANNOVAR?
37. Can ANNOVAR print out translated protein sequence?
38. Is it possible to add column names to the input file that are carried through the processing?
39. Can ANNOVAR call genotypes from sequencing data?
40. How to check if new version of ANNOVAR is available?
41. Can ANNOVAR handle dbSNP version 131 and 132 in hg18 coordinate?
42. What are the dispensible genes?
43. How to handle OMIM data?
44. What is the version of ENSEMBL used in ANNOVAR?
45. What do you mean missense and frameshift in ANNOVAR output?
46. How to annotate variants against dbSNP134?
47. How ANNOVAR handles different coordinate systems for mitochondria?
48. Can you add a few columns to the output of summarize_annovar?
49. How to get -downdb to work if I am behind a proxy?
50. How to support ANNOVAR?
51. How to license ANNOVAR?

How to report a bug or to ask a question?

The best way is: First, DO read the website especially FAQ. I received too many emails whose answers can easily be found in FAQ. Second, if you cannot find answer in FAQ or do not understand the answer well, then drop me an email which should contain (1) command line argument (2) error message in screen or the LOG file (3) sometimes example inputfile (4) in case you use Mac or Windows, let me know. The reason is that I can fix something or diagnose something only if I can understand the question and reproduce the results. So do yourself a favor and do me a favor, include details in your email to avoid wasting our time sending multiple emails.

How to annotate variants in a VCF file?

For example, I want to find out all novel variants (not in dbSNP135 and not in 1000G and not in NHLBI-ESP5400) in a VCF file, but without changing the VCF format. This can be done using convert2annovar.pl with the -includeinfo argument, so taht you convert VCF file to ANNOVAR inputfile without losing any VCF-specific information. Then annotate the inputfile by a series of filter operation, then convert the outputfile to VCF file using the "cut -f 3-" command in Linux system.

Why my run of gene-based annotation differ slightly from those shown in website?

UCSC database updates constantly and ANNOVAR executable also updates constantly, so it is expected that ANNOVAR output format or the annotations may change slightly over time.

Why ANNOVAR produced different non-synonymous SNP annotations than another software?

For example, ANNOVAR may report a mutation as W185R mutation, but another software may report the same mutation as R285W mutation. This could be due to the use of different gene-definition systems. ANNOVAR always use the lastest refGene, knownGene or ensGene to ensure that the information is up to date. This also could be due to the presence of bugs in one software or the other. If there is a potential bug that you find in ANNOVAR, please report to me.

In the past, whenever differences occur between ANNOVAR and another software or web server, manual examination usually show that ANNOVAR is correct (after many rounds of bug fixes reported by users). I cannot guarantee that it is always the case; therefore, if you suspect a bug in ANNOVAR, please report to me and I will investigate. Some times I am slow in responding, but I will always try to solve the issues eventually.

Why ANNOVAR says "WARNING: A total of 7 sequences cannot be found in mRNA.fa file"?

When you issue -downdb command, ANNOVAR downloads gene definitions from UCSC website, yet download FASTA files from ANNOVAR website. UCSC may update far more frequently then I update FASTA files, so sometimes some sequences cannot be found in the FASTA file. Users should use retrieve_seq_from_fasta.pl to generate your own set of most updated FASTA files for your genome of interests. Read here for more details.

It should be amino acid X in this position but ANNOVAR reports Y in this position!

For example, ANNOVAR reports p.X100Z as the amino acid change, but another web resource shows that position 100 should have wildtype of Y not X.

Whichever website you use, regardless of whether it is swissprot, refseq or whatever, remember that they always have their own way to collect proteome data and compile data, and these ways may result in slight discordance to theoretical protein sequence. Sometimes, these websites may directly translate a RefSeq transcript such as NM_123456 to a protein sequence and present it, but although ANNOVAR uses NM_123456 as well it uses the "theroteical mRNA sequence" inferred by ANNOVAR as opposed to those provided in RefSeq. By "theoretical", I mean a protein sequence that is translated from the "theoretical" mRNA sequence which is specified by a gene model as well as a whole-genome DNA sequence given a specific genome build. ANNOVAR is a software that produces this "theoretical" protein sequence, so if you want to stick with a specific genome build and a specific gene definition system, then ANNOVAR gives the correct results.

Exceptions exist when the gene model is not annotated correctly. In other word, when the exon start site, end site, splicing site have some slight errors. In this case, the protein sequence produced by ANNOVAR may be wrong and may contain pre-mature stop codons. (There are many many reasons this may happen, and one of the reasons is explained here. ) If you ever encounter such a variant, just try a differnet gene model (for example, using '-dbtype knowngene' or '-dbtype ensgene') to reannotate this variant. If you want to investigate this variant even more closely, considering using the coding_change.pl program in ANNOVAR, which will print out the theoretical protein sequence before mutation and after mutation, and will flag any potentially wrong theoretical protein sequence with WARNING messages.

In Nov 2011, I updated ANNOVAR so that any reference transcripts with premature stop codon (potential gene model annotation error or transcript-to-genome mapping error) will no longer be used in exonic_variant_function output file. See explanations here.

Why ANNOVAR reports a 3-bp deletion as frameshift deletion?

For example, "9      5720612 5720614 AGT     -" (hg19 coordinate) is annotated as non-frameshift deletion by CLCbio but ANNOVAR thinks it is a frameshift deletion. Biologically, a 3-bp frameshift deletion is indeed possible: This could happen, for example, when the 3-bp deletion covers only 1 or 2 bp in exons, and indeed this is the case for this deletion. ANNOVAR knows how to handle these types of complicated situations but other software may not.

Why ANNOVAR produced different non-synonymous SNP annotations (example, W185R) than UCSC Genome Browser (example, V204V)?

For example, for the input "3       77613005        77613005        T       C", ANNOVAR generates the output

line1   nonsynonymous   SNV     ROBO2:NM_001128929:exon3:p.W185R,       3       77613005        77613005        T       C

But UCSC Genome Browser (which ANNOVAR is based upon) will give a different result. Why?

There are many gene definitions in genome browser, including the "UCSC Genes" definition. When you check the Genome Browser, the track that shows amino acid identity is the "UCSC Gene" track, not the "RefSeq Gene" track, which is the default gene definition in ANNOVAR.

If running ANNOVAR using "-dbtype knowngene", the output will be

line1   synonymous SNV  ROBO2:uc003dpy.2:exon4:p.V204V, 3 77613005        77613005        T       C

which is identical to what Genome Browser reports. So this example again highlight the complication of genome annotation and gene structure prediction. It is however not an inherent problem in ANNOVAR per se. Users need to exercise caution in interpreting data, and ideally run the same analysis using two different gene definition systems just to make sure that things are working as expected.

Why ANNOVAR reports T182A,T190A,T300A as the amino acid change but another web server reports only T300A?

Alternative splicing is prevalent in human genome and as a result, it is best to annotate amino acid change with respect to a certain transcript rather than gene. Other servers or software may randomly pick one script as the representative "gene" and gives one single answer. ANNOVAR tries to be comprehensive and always accompany annotation by transcript names, and it is up to the user which representative transcript they want to use or if they want to use all.

Why ANNOVAR reports c.C100T when my input is G to A change

The c.C100T is a cDNA (actually, mRNA) level change. ANNOVAR input (G to A) has to be in the forward strand, and if the transcript is in the reverse strand, there will be a C to T change in the mRNA.

Why ANNOVAR reports c.T5997G when my input is T to C change in chr14:31582550-31582550 in hg19 coordinate?

First, this transcript is in the reverse strand, so the mutation is changed to "G". Second, your input is wrong: this position should be A in hg19, so c.T5997 should be the reference base. Maybe you used a wrong genome build, or your genotype calling software has a bug. ANNOVAR did it correctly. Starting from September 2011, ANNOVAR will try to print out WARNING messages telling user that they used wrong reference alleles in their input file for exonic variants.

Why ANNOVAR reports p.P265delinsPQ in the output?

The insertion breaks a codon for P (but did not alter P per se), so P is changed to PQ. You can alternatively interpret this as a simple amino acid insertion, although the nucleotide codon for the previous amino acid actually is changed.

Why some splicing variants have no splicing annotation?

For example, in variant_function file, chr3:109033403-109033403 in hg19 is annotated as splicing variants, but the changes on coding sequence is not annotated. This is because the variants affect UTR, and not the coding exon, so the changes on coding sequence cannot be annotated.

Why my mutation gets lost by ANNOVAR?

A user reported that the input "17      16256671        16256671        C       G" in hg19 coordinate was reported as a "CENPV:NM_181716:exon1:c.C80C " mutation, so the C->G change gets lost by ANNOVAR. Read the FAQ item above: the input is wrong, as this position should be a G wildtype in reference genome, so the C80C mutation is the correct mutation in the opposite strand.

Why ANNOVAR reports "unknown" in exonic_variant_function?

"unknown" means that the gene structure is not correctly annotated (complete ORF information is not available). Previous versions of ANNOVAR will always give an answer such as non-synonymous SNVs, etc, but I got too many user emails complaining about "bugs" (even though ANNOVAR is innocent in this case). So after December 2011, if errors exist in gene structure annotation (RefSeq, Ensembl, UCSC, etc), ANNOVAR will just report unknown for exonic_variant_function; in other word, although the variant is clearly within an exon, we cannot say for sure how it affects protein sequence as the ORF annotation is not correct.

Why ANNOVAR reports the same function for two different mutations in two sites

Sometimes different mutations are reported to have the same function in gene-based annotation. For example, these mutations at chromsome 4 at coordiante 8945506, 8950251, 8954996, 8959741, 8964486, 8969231, 8973977 are all reported to be USP17:NM_001105662:exon1:c.A25G:p.R9G. There is nothing wrong: if you check the USP17 gene in genome browser, you'll see that there are at least 9 copies of the gene in each haplotype. So all the mutations (if they are real) all have the same function. In reality, it is likely that these mutations are not real, but are rather artifacts of base-level differences between any random two copies of the same gene.

Why ANNOVAR complains that "wildtype base is not part of the allele description" in filter-based annotation?

When -verbose is used, ANNOVAR may complain that "wildtype base is not part of the allele description" in filter-based annotation using dbSNP. For example, this may occur for the SNP rs61747618. If you look at the actual snp130.txt file downloaded by ANNOVAR, you'll see

1194    chr17   79891146        79891147        rs61747618      0 +       T       T       A/G     genomic single  unknown      0       0 coding-synon,intron     exact   1

So the reference allele "T" is not part of the "allele description" in dbSNP.

If you further go to Genome Browser page for this particular SNP, you'll see that there is a specific warning message that " UCSC reference allele does not match any observed allele from dbSNP.". So essentially there is a potential annotation error in dbSNP (at least that's what UCSC thinks), where none of the alleles for this SNP is in the reference human genome. It is possible that this is a tri-allelic SNP (although dbSNP could have annotated this as tri-allelic), or it is possible that this is merely an alignment issue (UCSC and dbSNP did their alignment independently so their top alignments may not be identical to each other). There is really nothing that ANNOVAR can do, except to throw a warning message if you turn on -verbose.

Why ANNOVAR complains "exonic SNPs have WRONG reference alleles " in gene-based annotation?

This happens when ANNOVAR thinks the "reference allele" in your input does not fit the "reference allele" in the mRNA FASTA file in ANNOVAR's database. This could be due to several reason, (1) wrong -buildver, or (2) you did not specify the correct reference allele, or (3) mRNA FASTA file is outdated as the gene model gets updated pretty quickly by UCSC.

To solve this problem, first check (1) and (2) to make sure that you did have the correct input. If you cannot find an error, then update the FASTA file by retrieve_seq_from_fasta.pl command, with more details here.

Why FASTA sequence in ANNOVAR differ from those in public databases?

For example, the mRNA of the MYBPC3 gene (NM_000256) extracted from ucsc and the other one extracted from annovar hg18_refGeneMrna.txt file differ. The reason is simple: FASTA in ANNOVAR is built from ANNOVAR using chr:start-end records, not copied/pasted from any public database. Any errors in chr:start-end will lead to errors in ANNOVAR-compiled FASTA. To avoid future complaints, FASTA sequences with premature stop codon will no longer be used in exonic annotation, although they still exist in the FASTA file. More explanations are given here.

Why ANNOVAR's TFBS annotation differ from what I have from another web server?

There are MANY different transcription binding sites (TFBS) annotations generated by hundreds of research groups in the world. ANNOVAR used a keyword "TFBS" for only one specific type of annotation that have a long history in Genome Browser, but it does not mean that this is the ultimate solution for TFBS prediction. ANNOVAR can certainly take many other types of TFBS annotations for but it won't use the keyword "tfbs" for that. In fact, as you can see from the region-based annotation page, ANNOVAR can also annotate TFBS ChIP-Seq from the ENCODE project.

The take home message is that there are many annotations on TFBS, and they may differ from each other substantially. Use caution when interpreting the data. Ultimately, it is the biologist himself/herself who can decide whether or not the annotation makes sense; ANNOVAR faciliate this process but it cannot make the decision for you.

Can ANNOVAR support other non-synonymous mutation annotation methods besides SIFT?

ANNOVAR can hanle any annotation methods as long as the chr, start, stop, nucleotide and score for whole-exome mutation is available and formatted in "generic format". Furthermore, in May 2011, ANNOVAR added the annotation for PolyPhen, LRT, PhyloP and so on from the paper.

Also remember, ANNOVAR filter-based annotation does not care whether it is non-synonymous or intronic or intergenic. As long as you have an annotation for whole-genome mutations, you can annotate it. Say if you can generate a "function" score for all 9 billion human mutations, ANNOVAR can handle it just fine in a modern computer. One potential example is the conservation score for each base in the human genome (regardless of nucleotide identity): ANNOVAR can handle that.

Why the SIFT scores in ANNOVAR differ from those obtained from SIFT website?

The SIFT scores in ANNOVAR was based on Ensembl55 database, and sometimes there are major differences from those computed from ensembl63 (default in SIFT website). If you selecte ensembl55 from SIFT website you'll see that the scores are consistent and identical.

How to infer base-level GERP scores and phastCons scores in ANNOVAR?

The file size for whole-genome data is too big (>200GB per file per genome build) when I convert these scores to ANNOVAR database format. I cannot host the files online, unless I get a grant to support this. For now, ANNOVAR users have to do this yourself.

On Dec 20, 2011, we did make whole-exome GERP++ scores available to ANNOVAR users for exome annotation. use "-downdb ljb_gerp++" with appropriate -buildver.

Can ANNOVAR identify all SNPs annotated within dbSNP in a given region (say chr1:3751541-3751607)?

In ANNOVAR, filter annotation identifes exact matches including base pair identity, yet region annotation identify overlapping regions. When you use --filter, the program will tell whether the region chr1:3751541-3751607 is a SNP within dbSNP (highly unlikely to be the case). In more recent versions of ANNOVAR, region annotation can handle snp130 now. For example, just try "annotate_variation.pl ex1.human humandb/ -region -dbtype snp130". However, this command require about 10GB memory to run.

However, if you are only looking at one single specific region, a simple script can be used to address this question, after using "-downdb snp130" in ANNOVAR:

[kai@beta ~/]$ perl -ne '@a=split(/\t/,$_); $a[1] eq "chr1" and $a[3]>=3751541 and $a[3]<=3751607 and print $a[4],"\n"' < hg18_snp130.txt

How to handle 1000 Genomes Project data in hg19 coordiante?

Since November 2010, ANNOVAR can handle the new 1000G Phase 1 data in hg19 coordinate. A sample session is given below:

annotate_variation.pl -buildver hg19 -downdb 1000g2010nov humandb

The above command download the variation database and save it to the humandb/ directory, but remember that this database is for 629 subjects combined together without separate files for each population.

annotate_variation.pl -buildver hg19 -filter ex1.list humandb/ -dbtype 1000g2010nov_all

The above command scan the variants in ex1.list against the 1000G November release. Note that the "1000g2010nov_all" is used, because there is no separate files for ceu, yri, etc.

How to annotate simple repeat regions in human genome?

Read these pages:
http://www.genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTrackUi?hgsid=199336701&c=chr1&g=simpleRepeat
http://www.genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTrackUi?hgsid=199336701&c=chr1&g=rmsk
http://www.genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTrackUi?hgsid=199336701&c=chr1&g=rmskRM327

Then pick one that matches your goal, then annotate by ANNOVAR.

How to handle database file in VCF format?

ANNOVAR can accept database files in VCF format, but only if the format contains allele frequency measures. For example, the VCF file released by 1000 Genomes Project is a valid input database file. The VCF file generated by genotype calling algorithms (such as GATK, etc) are not, because they are not "database", but are "input" to be scanned against a "database". The input contains genotype calls for one single indiviudal, but the database contains population-level variation data including frequency measures.

For example, suppose we want to scan an input file against the 1000G November release. Rather than using the procedure described in the last FAQ item, we can alternatively do:

wget ftp://ftp-trace.ncbi.nih.gov/1000genomes/ftp/release/2010_11/ALL.2of4intersection.20100804.sites.vcf.gz
gunzip ALL.2of4intersection.20100804.sites.vcf.gz
annotate_variation.pl -buildver hg19 -filter ex1.human humandb/ -vcfdbfile ALL.2of4intersection.20100804.sites.vcf -dbtype vcf

This command will have the same effect, but it is designed for expert only. The user need to know exactly where the files are stored (the file name shows 2010 Aug but in fact this is a Nov release), and what are the underlying genome coordinate system (file name does not tell whether it is in hg18 or hg19). Most casual users of ANNOVAR should not need to use this functionality.

How to handle E. coli, Arabidopsis thaliana and other genomes not in UCSC?

For gene-based annotations (say for example, -dbtype refgene), ANNOVAR requires 3 files: a refGene file specifying gene model, a refLink file telling the gene name for each transcript, and a FASTA file with sequence for each transcript. You can make 3 files for the genome using the following rules:

For refGene file, each line has 16 tab-delimited columns: $bin, $name, $chr, $dbstrand, $txstart, $txend, $cdsstart, $cdsend, $exoncount, $exonstart, $exonend, $id, $name2, $cdsstartstat, $cdsendstat, $exonframes. The only real important thing is $name (transcript name), $chr (chromosome), $dbstrand (strand of the transcript in reference genome), $txstart, $txend (transcription start and end), $cdsstart, $cdsend (translation start and end, remember that there are 5/3-UTR in each transcript so the $cdsstart is not the same as $txstart), $exoncount (number of exoms), $exonstart $exonend (comma-delimited exon start and end sites). Remember that all start sites use zero-based coordinates.

For refLink file, you can make anything. The file will be ignored. (It is important for very old genome annotations when name2 field is not present in refGene, but it is not really useful today as people will not use old genome assembly nowadays).

For FASTA file, make sure that the $name in ">$name" matches the refGene file, in a case-sensitive manner. You can build the file yourself, or you can directly use retrieve_seq_from_db.pl in ANNOVAR to generate this file, given a FASTA file for the genome. Make sure that strand is correct in the cDNA if you build the file yourself.

After you have three three files, you can directly run ANNOVAR by specifying -buildver argument to match your file prefix.

Can ANNOVAR support GENCODE or other gene annotation systems?

ANNOVAR gene-based annotation is not limited to refGene, knownGene and ensGene. In principle, it supports anything that you throw in, as long as you use the correct syntax. Right now I did not put a specific gencode keyword in ANNOVAR (so it will be more difficult if you want to use GENCODE to do ANNOVAR annotation), but I may put it in the future. See gene-based annotation section to learn how to use GENCODE to perform gene-based annotation.

what is the difference of dominant and recessive model in auto_annovar?

The real only difference is that for recessive model, the final"genelist" contains genes in which at least 2 filtered heterozygous mutations (or one homozygous mutation) are found, but for dominant model, only one filtered heterozygous mutation is required.

Why the total number of homozygous and heterozygous variants is more than the number of variant site (convert2annovar.pl)?

Suppose we see 30 reads in a site, and 10 are A, 10 are G and 10 are C. This is one site, but may be presented as two heterozygous mutations from the genotype calling algorithm. This could be due to a tri-allelic SNP, or a genomic duplication, or just sequencing error.

What is the "discordant sequence length" warning?

For example, NM_001080138 was annotated in 9 different positions in the human genome hg18 coordinate. Sometimes they have identical sequence, sometimes not. Since NM_001080138 is the only identifier for the transcript, retrieve_seq_from_db.pl (or ANNOVAR with -verbose) will throw a warning message to notify user about this. If a user wants to have absolute accuracy in annotation, then you have to manually rename these transcript as NM_001080138_copy2, NM_001080138_copy3 and so on in refGene.txt, re-generate refGeneMrna.fa, and then do the annotation again.

Can ANNOVAR handle IUPAC code in input?

No. ANNOVAR is a variant annotation program, not a genotype annotation program. It needs to see A, C, G, T, not a IUPAC code representing ambiguity of an allele, or an IUPAC code representing a genotype call.

Can ANNOVAR handle genotype calls in input?

No. ANNOVAR is a variant annotation program, not a genotype annotation program. You can only specify the allele of an observed variant (such as A, G, etc), not a genotype on a specific position (such as AG genotype).

How to handle two very close SNPs in the same codon?

If two SNPs are separetd by only one or two nucleotides, it is best to treat them as a block substituion, rather than two separate variants. Otherwise, the annotation may not be correct if the two SNPs happen to impact the same codon.

How to select the X-way phastCons conservation track in ANNOVAR?

This totally depends on the genome build, and you need to check genome browser for the number of tracks. For example, for chicken genome, if you select galGal3 as the --buildver, then you'll see in the genome brower page (by hovering mouse on top of "Most Conserved") that it is 7way, so use mce7way as the -dbtype.

Can ANNOVAR print out translated protein sequence?

annotate_variation.pl cannot do that directly, and it is very difficult to modify the existing exonic annotation subroutine to do this. Therefore, in June 2011 version of ANNOVAR, I added the coding_change.pl program to infer translated protein sequence before and after mutation occur.

Is it possible to add column names to the input file that are carried through the processing?

Some users routinely use extra columns and would like to include the column headers rather than having to edit the resulting ANNOVAR output (usually ANNOVAR will treat the line with column names as "invalid" line and put it into the invalid_input file). This can be done with the -comment argument, which treats any input line starting with "#" as the comment line and do not discard it.

Can ANNOVAR call genotypes from sequencing data?

ANNOVAR does NOT generate "genotype calling". Dozens of other software tools can perform SNP calling from sequencing data. However, if the user refers to "assigning rs identifiers to SNPs", ANNOVAR can certainly be very helpful (see the example on filtering against dbSNP).

How to check if new version of ANNOVAR is available?

Either go to ANNOVAR website to see what's the latest version and compare to your current version (type annotate_variation.pl without argument will print out version information). Or use "annotate_variation.pl -downdb null . " to enable automatic web-based checking of new version without downloading any database.

Can ANNOVAR handle dbSNP version 131 and 132 in hg18 coordinate?

I received many emails asking for this, but unfortunately it seems that dbSNP no longer works on hg18. Dr. Leparc volunteered to do the hard work to life over current dbSNP (as of March 2011) to hg18 and provided the files. Users should first update to the latest ANNOVAR software, then use "annotate_variation.pl -webfrom annovar -downdb snp131 humandb/ " to download the database.

What are the dispensible genes?

The dispensible.all file contains the genes originally used in paper. These are outdated gene list purely based on 2009 1000G calls, to identify genes with frequency nonsense mutations. They should be interpreted as either non-lethal genes, or as genes susceptible to alignment issues. These are not genes that are functionally not important: they may still cause diseases, but unlikely the 100% penetrant Mendelian form. You can obviously compile your own list based on updated variant calls.

How to handle OMIM data?

Many people studying Mendelian diseases perhaps are interested in annotating variants against the OMIM database. However, the 16 June 2011 News from UCSC shows that although they released newly re-engineered OMIM tracks for both hg18 and hg19, "the OMIM data are the property of Johns Hopkins University and will not be available for download from UCSC". I will try to find a reasonable solution to this problem in the future.

For now, you can just go to http://omim.org/downloads, fill out the forms and get a copy of the data. Then reformat this copy of database, and use ANNOVAR for annotation. I cannot make a derivative database for you, per their guideline.

What is the version of ENSEMBL used in ANNOVAR?

ANNOVAR retrieves ensGene definition from UCSC, so it depends on the version that UCSC has used. For human hg19 build, just go to http://www.genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTrackUi?hgsid=211204337&g=ensGene, and see what is the latest release for Ensembl gene prediction.

What do you mean missense and frameshift in ANNOVAR output?

It is best to read some background materials on genetic mutations, rather than emailing me for explanations. See explanation for missense mutation, nonsense mutation, silent mutation, synonymous mutation, frameshift mutation, transition, transversion.

How to annotate variants against the latest dbSNP (dbSNP135 and later)?

If one day UCSC makes it available in their website, then users can directly use -downdb in ANNOVAR and download the database and use it just like dbsnp130.

For now, you can download the data ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/snp/organisms/human_9606/VCF/v4.0/00-All.vcf.gz, then use ANNOVAR's VCF scanning function to annotate against the latest dbSNP (dbSNP135 as of Nov 2011): annotate_variation.pl -filter inputfile directory -dbtype vcf -vcfdbfile databasefile

How ANNOVAR handles different coordinate systems for mitochondria?

UCSC's build (for example, hg19) differ from NCBI's build (for example NCBI 37) in a few subtle manners, for example, replacing contigs by chr_random, and the use of different mitochondia assemblies. UCSC's hg19 assembly used the old version mitochondria genome (NC_001807), but 1000 genomes cosortium has replace the chrM with the latest Cambridge Reference Sequence version (NC_012920). So if you align your sequence data and call variants against the NC_012920, then you cannot really annotate your variants using UCSC's gene definition. It is necessary to stick with the identical coordinate. For autosomes and chrX/Y, this is not a real issue as they are pretty consistent.

In addition, For most organisms the "stop codons" are “UAA”, “UAG”, and “UGA”. In vertebrate mitochondria “AGA” and “AGG” are also stop codons, but not “UGA”, which codes for tryptophan instead. “AUA” codes for isoleucine in most organisms but for methionine in vertebrate mitochondrial mRNA. Users have to manually change this within code for now, but in the future I may implement these changes within ANNOVAR.

Can you add a few columns to the output of summarize_annovar?

Some users need to add additional annotations to summarize_annovar, for example, CG46 scores, GERP regions, SimpleRepeat regions, etc. I cannot honor individual request to do that, but the source code is relatively straightforward, and you can easily just add in a few columns by yourself.

If in the future, if I get fundings to support ANNOVAR, I will begin invest time to write a more generic summarize_annovar.pl which will be super powerful in handling all types of user requests by command line arguments. But for now, I just do not have the time, energy or passion to do it. If you believe that this is important, send me a support letter and I'll use it to urge funding agencies.

How to get -downdb to work if I am behind a proxy server?

The -downdb use "wget" by default without any argument. You can add "-nowget" in the command line, so that Perl HTTP/FTP modules will be used instead which should handle proxy well. Or you can modify the ANNOVAR source code to use wget with proxy functionality.

How to support ANNOVAR?

If ANNOVAR is helpful to your work or research, please cite it in your powerpoint slides, or in your published scientific manuscripts. This means a lot to me.

How to license ANNOVAR?

ANNOVAR is open-source and free for non-profit use. If you use it for commercial purposes, please contact Ellen Purpus, director of OTT (PURPUS@email.chop.edu) directly for license related issues.