1.12

Download the source code here: bcftools-1.12.tar.bz2.
(The "Source code" downloads are generated by GitHub and are incomplete as they don't bundle HTSlib and are missing some generated files.)

Changes affecting the whole of bcftools, or multiple commands:

• The output file type is determined from the output file name suffix, where available, so the -O/--output-type option is often no longer necessary.

• Make F_MISSING in filtering expressions work for sites with multiple ALT alleles (#1343)

• Fix N_PASS and F_PASS to behave according to expectation when reverse logic is used (#1397). This fix has the side effect of query (or programs like +trio-stats) behaving differently with these expressions, operating now in site-oriented rather than sample-oriented mode. For example, the new behavior could be:

  bcftools query -f'[%POS %SAMPLE %GT\n]' -i'N_PASS(GT="alt")==1'
  11	A	0/0
  11	B	0/0
  11	C	1/1
  

  while previously the same expression would return:

  11	C	1/1
  

  The original mode can be mimicked by splitting the filtering into two steps:

  bcftools view -i'N_PASS(GT="alt")==1' | bcftools query -f'[%POS %SAMPLE %GT\n]' -i'GT="alt"'
  

Changes affecting specific commands:

• bcftools annotate:

  • New --rename-annots option to help fix broken VCFs (#1335)

  • New -C option allows to read a long list of options from a file to prevent very long command lines.

  • New append-missing logic allows annotations to be added for each ALT allele in the same order as they appear in the VCF. Note that this is not bullet proof. In order for this to work:

    • the annotation file must have one line per ALT allele

    • fields must contain a single value as multiple values are appended as they are and would break the correspondence between the alleles and values

• bcftools concat:

  • Do not phase genotypes by mistake if they are not already phased with -l (#1346)

• bcftools consensus:

  • New --mask-with, --mark-del, --mark-ins, --mark-snv options (#1382, #1381, #1170)

  • Symbolic <DEL> should have only one REF base. If there are multiple, take POS+1 as the first deleted base.

  • Make consensus work when the first base of the reference genome is deleted. In this situation the VCF record has POS=1 and the first REF base cannot precede the event. (#1330)

• bcftools +contrast:

  • The NOVELGT annotation was previously not added when requested.

• bcftools convert:

  • Make the --hapsample and --hapsample2vcf options consistent with each other and with the documentation.

• bcftools call:

  • Revamp of call -G, previously sample grouping by population was not truly independent and could still be influenced by the presence of other sample groups.

  • Optional addition of INFO/PV4 annotation with call -a INFO/PV4

  • Remove generation of useless HOB and ICB annotation; use +fill-tags -- -t HWE,ExcHet instead

  • The call -f option was renamed to -a to (1) make it consistent with mpileup and (2) to indicate that it includes both INFO and FORMAT annotations, not just FORMAT as previously

  • Any sensible Number=R,Type=Integer annotation can be used with -G, such as AD or QS

  • Don't trim QUAL; although usefulness of this change is questionable for true probabilistic interpretation (such high precision is unrealistic), using QUAL as a score rather than probability is helpful and permits more fine-grained filtering

  • Fix a suspected bug in call -F in the worst case, for certain improve readability

  • call -C trio is temporarily disabled

• bcftools csq:

  • Fix a bug wich caused incorrect FORMAT/BCSQ formatting at sites with too many per-sample consequences

  • Fix a bug which incorrectly handled the --ncsq parameter and could clash with reserved BCF values, consequently producing truncated or even incorrect output of the %TBCSQ formatting expression in bcftools query. To account for the reserved values, the new default value is --ncsq 15 (#1428)

• bcftools +fill-tags:

  • MAF definition revised for multiallelic sites, the second most common allele is considered to be the minor allele (#1313)

  • New FORMAT/VAF, VAF1 annotations to set the fraction of alternate reads provided FORMAT/AD is present

• bcftools gtcheck:

  • support matching of a single sample against all other samples in the file with -s qry:sample -s gt:-. This was previously not possible, either full cross-check mode had to be run or a list of pairs/samples had to be created explicitly

• bcftools merge:

  • Make merge -R behavior consistent with other commands and pull in overlapping records with POS outside of the regions (#1374)

  • Bug fix (#1353)

• bcftools mpileup:

  • Add new optional tag mpileup -a FORMAT/QS

• bcftools norm:

  • New -a, --atomize functionality to decompose complex variants, for example MNVs into consecutive SNVs

  • New option --old-rec-tag to indicate the original variant

• bcftools query:

  • Incorrect fields were printed in the per-sample output when subset of samples was requested via -s/-S and the order of samples in the header was different from the requested -s/-S order (#1435)

• bcftools +prune:

  • New options --random-seed and --nsites-per-win-mode (#1050)

• bcftools +split-vep:

  • Transcript selection now works also on the raw CSQ/BCSQ annotation.

  • Bug fix, samples were dropped on VCF input and VCF/BCF output (#1349)

• bcftools stats:

  • Changes to QUAL and ts/tv plotting stats: avoid capping QUAL to predefined bins, use an open-range logarithmic binning instead

  • plot dual ts/tv stats: per quality bin and cumulative as if threshold applied on the whole dataset

• bcftools +trio-dnm2:

  • Major revamp of +trio-dnm plugin, which is now deprecated and replaced by +trio-dnm2.
    The original trio-dnm calling model used genotype likelihoods (PLs) as the input for calling. However, that is flawed because PLs make assumptions which are unsuitable for de novo calling: PL(RR) can become bigger than PL(RA) even when the ALT allele is present in the parents. Note that this is true also for other programs such as DeNovoGear which rely on the same samtools calculation.
    The new recommended workflow is:

    bcftools mpileup -a AD,QS -f ref.fa -Ou proband.bam father.bam mother.bam | \
    bcftools call -mv -Ou | \
    bcftools +trio-dnm -p proband,father,mother -Oz -o output.vcf.gz
    

    This new version also implements the DeNovoGear model. The original behavior of trio-dnm is no longer supported.
    For more details see http://samtools.github.io/bcftools/trio-dnm.pdf