Tagged with #intervals
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The -L argument (short for --intervals) enables you to restrict your analysis to specific intervals instead of running over the whole genome. Using this argument can have important consequences for performance and/or results. Here, we present some guidelines for using it appropriately depending on your experimental design.

In a nutshell, if you’re doing:

- Whole genome analysis: no need to include intervals
- Whole exome analysis: you need to provide the list of capture targets (typically genes/exons)
- Small targeted experiment: you need to provide the targeted interval(s)
- Troubleshooting: you can run on a specific interval to test parameters or create a data snippet

Important note:

Whatever you end up using -L for, keep this in mind: for tools that output a bam or VCF file, the output file will only contain data from the intervals specified by the -L argument. To be clear, we do not recommend using -L with tools that output a bam file since doing so will omit some data from the output.

So here’s a little more detail for each experimental design type.

Whole genome analysis

It is not necessary to use -L in whole genome analysis. You should be interested in the whole genome!

Nevertheless, in some cases, you may want to mask out certain contigs (e.g. chrY or non-chromosome contigs) or regions (e.g. centromere). You can do this with -XL, which does the exact opposite of -L; it excludes the provided intervals.

Whole exome analysis

By definition, exome sequencing data doesn’t cover the entire genome, so many analyses can be restricted to just the capture targets (genes or exons) to save processing time. There are even some analyses which should be restricted to the capture targets because failing to do so can lead to suboptimal results.

Note that we recommend adding some “padding” to the intervals in order to include the flanking regions (typically ~100 bp). No need to modify your target list; you can have the GATK engine do it for you automatically using the interval padding argument. This is not required, but if you do use it, you should do it consistently at all steps where you use -L.

Below is a step-by-step breakdown of the Best Practices workflow, with a detailed explanation of why -L should or shouldn’t be used with each tool.

Tool -L? Why / why not
RealignerTargetCreator YES Faster since RTC will only look for regions that need to be realigned within the input interval; no time wasted on the rest.
IndelRealigner NO IR will only try to realign the regions output from RealignerTargetCreator, so there is nothing to be gained by providing the capture targets.
BaseRecalibrator YES This excludes off-target sequences and sequences that may be poorly mapped, which have a higher error rate. Including them could lead to a skewed model and bad recalibration.
PrintReads NO Output is a bam file; using -L would lead to lost data.
UnifiedGenotyper/Haplotype Caller YES We’re only interested in making calls in exome regions; the rest is a waste of time & includes lots of false positives.
Next steps NO No need since subsequent steps operate on the callset, which was restricted to the exome at the calling step.

Small targeted experiments

The same guidelines as for whole exome analysis apply except you do not run BQSR on small datasets.

Debugging / troubleshooting

You can go crazy with -L while troubleshooting! For example, you can just provide an interval at the command line, and the output file will contain the data from that interval.This is really useful when you’re trying to figure out what’s going on in a specific interval (e.g. why HaplotypeCaller is not calling your favorite indel) or what would be the effect of changing a parameter (e.g. what happens to your indel call if you increase the value of -minPruning). This is also what you’d use to generate a file snippet to send us as part of a bug report (except that never happens because GATK has no bugs, ever).

Comments (2)

1. What file formats do you support for interval lists?

We support three types of interval lists, as mentioned here. Interval lists should preferentially be formatted as Picard-style interval lists, with an explicit sequence dictionary, as this prevents accidental misuse (e.g. hg18 intervals on an hg19 file). Note that this file is 1-based, not 0-based (first position in the genome is position 1).

2. I have two (or more) sequencing experiments with different target intervals. How can I combine them?

One relatively easy way to combine your intervals is to use the online tool Galaxy, using the Get Data -> Upload command to upload your intervals, and the Operate on Genomic Intervals command to compute the intersection or union of your intervals (depending on your needs).

Comments (62)

All analyses done with the GATK typically involve several (though not necessarily all) of the following inputs:

  • Reference genome sequence
  • Sequencing reads
  • Intervals of interest
  • Reference-ordered data

This article describes the corresponding file formats that are acceptable for use with the GATK.

1. Reference Genome Sequence

The GATK requires the reference sequence in a single reference sequence in FASTA format, with all contigs in the same file. The GATK requires strict adherence to the FASTA standard. All the standard IUPAC bases are accepted, but keep in mind that non-standard bases (i.e. other than ACGT, such as W for example) will be ignored (i.e. those positions in the genome will be skipped).

Some users have reported having issues with reference files that have been stored or modified on Windows filesystems. The issues manifest as "10" characters (corresponding to encoded newlines) inserted in the sequence, which cause the GATK to quit with an error. If you encounter this issue, you will need to re-download a valid master copy of the reference file, or clean it up yourself.

Gzipped fasta files will not work with the GATK, so please make sure to unzip them first. Please see this article for more information on preparing FASTA reference sequences for use with the GATK.

Important note about human genome reference versions

If you are using human data, your reads must be aligned to one of the official b3x (e.g. b36, b37) or hg1x (e.g. hg18, hg19) references. The contig ordering in the reference you used must exactly match that of one of the official references canonical orderings. These are defined by historical karotyping of largest to smallest chromosomes, followed by the X, Y, and MT for the b3x references; the order is thus 1, 2, 3, ..., 10, 11, 12, ... 20, 21, 22, X, Y, MT. The hg1x references differ in that the chromosome names are prefixed with "chr" and chrM appears first instead of last. The GATK will detect misordered contigs (for example, lexicographically sorted) and throw an error. This draconian approach, though unnecessary technically, ensures that all supplementary data provided with the GATK works correctly. You can use ReorderSam to fix a BAM file aligned to a missorted reference sequence.

Our Best Practice recommendation is that you use a standard GATK reference from the GATK resource bundle.

2. Sequencing Reads

The only input format for sequence reads that the GATK itself supports is the [Sequence Alignment/Map (SAM)] format. See [SAM/BAM] for more details on the SAM/BAM format as well as Samtools and Picard, two complementary sets of utilities for working with SAM/BAM files.

If you don't find the information you need in this section, please see our FAQs on BAM files.

If you are starting out your pipeline with raw reads (typically in FASTQ format) you'll need to make sure that when you map those reads to the reference and produce a BAM file, the resulting BAM file is fully compliant with the GATK requirements. See the Best Practices documentation for detailed instructions on how to do this.

In addition to being in SAM format, we require the following additional constraints in order to use your file with the GATK:

  • The file must be binary (with .bam file extension).
  • The file must be indexed.
  • The file must be sorted in coordinate order with respect to the reference (i.e. the contig ordering in your bam must exactly match that of the reference you are using).
  • The file must have a proper bam header with read groups. Each read group must contain the platform (PL) and sample (SM) tags. For the platform value, we currently support 454, LS454, Illumina, Solid, ABI_Solid, and CG (all case-insensitive).
  • Each read in the file must be associated with exactly one read group.

Below is an example well-formed SAM field header and fields (with @SQ dictionary truncated to show only the first two chromosomes for brevity):

@HD     VN:1.0  GO:none SO:coordinate
@SQ     SN:1    LN:249250621    AS:NCBI37       UR:file:/lustre/scratch102/projects/g1k/ref/main_project/human_g1k_v37.fasta    M5:1b22b98cdeb4a9304cb5d48026a85128
@SQ     SN:2    LN:243199373    AS:NCBI37       UR:file:/lustre/scratch102/projects/g1k/ref/main_project/human_g1k_v37.fasta    M5:a0d9851da00400dec1098a9255ac712e
@RG     ID:ERR000162    PL:ILLUMINA     LB:g1k-sc-NA12776-CEU-1 PI:200  DS:SRP000031    SM:NA12776      CN:SC
@RG     ID:ERR000252    PL:ILLUMINA     LB:g1k-sc-NA12776-CEU-1 PI:200  DS:SRP000031    SM:NA12776      CN:SC
@RG     ID:ERR001684    PL:ILLUMINA     LB:g1k-sc-NA12776-CEU-1 PI:200  DS:SRP000031    SM:NA12776      CN:SC
@RG     ID:ERR001685    PL:ILLUMINA     LB:g1k-sc-NA12776-CEU-1 PI:200  DS:SRP000031    SM:NA12776      CN:SC
@PG     ID:GATK TableRecalibration      VN:v2.2.16      CL:Covariates=[ReadGroupCovariate, QualityScoreCovariate, DinucCovariate, CycleCovariate], use_original_quals=true, defau 
t_read_group=DefaultReadGroup, default_platform=Illumina, force_read_group=null, force_platform=null, solid_recal_mode=SET_Q_ZERO, window_size_nqs=5, homopolymer_nback=7, except on_if_no_tile=false, pQ=5, maxQ=40, smoothing=137       UR:file:/lustre/scratch102/projects/g1k/ref/main_project/human_g1k_v37.fasta    M5:b4eb71ee878d3706246b7c1dbef69299
@PG     ID:bwa  VN:0.5.5
ERR001685.4315085       16      1       9997    25      35M     *       0       0       CCGATCTCCCTAACCCTAACCCTAACCCTAACCCT     ?8:C7ACAABBCBAAB?CCAABBEBA@ACEBBB@?     XT:A:U  XN:i:4    X0:i:1  X1:i:0  XM:i:2  XO:i:0  XG:i:0  RG:Z:ERR001685  NM:i:6  MD:Z:0N0N0N0N1A0A28     OQ:Z:>>:>2>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>?>>>>??>???>
ERR001689.1165834       117     1       9997    0       *       =       9997    0       CCGATCTAGGGTTAGGGTTAGGGTTAGGGTTAGGG     >7AA<@@C?@?B?B??>9?B??>A?B???BAB??@     RG:Z:ERR001689    OQ:Z:>:<<8<<<><<><><<>7<>>>?>>??>???????
ERR001689.1165834       185     1       9997    25      35M     =       9997    0       CCGATCTCCCTAACCCTAACCCTAACCCTAACCCT     758A:?>>8?=@@>>?;4<>=??@@==??@?==?8     XT:A:U  XN:i:4    SM:i:25 AM:i:0  X0:i:1  X1:i:0  XM:i:2  XO:i:0  XG:i:0  RG:Z:ERR001689  NM:i:6  MD:Z:0N0N0N0N1A0A28     OQ:Z:;74>7><><><>>>>><:<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ERR001688.2681347       117     1       9998    0       *       =       9998    0       CGATCTTAGGGTTAGGGTTAGGGTTAGGGTTAGGG     5@BA@A6B???A?B??>B@B??>B@B??>BAB???     RG:Z:ERR001688    OQ:Z:=>>>><4><<?><??????????????????????       

Note about fixing BAM files with alternative sortings

The GATK requires that the BAM file be sorted in the same order as the reference. Unfortunately, many BAM files have headers that are sorted in some other order -- lexicographical order is a common alternative. To resort the BAM file please use ReorderSam.

3. Intervals of interest

If you don't find the information you need in this section, please see our FAQs on interval lists.

The GATK accept interval files for processing subsets of the genome in Picard-style interval lists. These files typically have an extension such as '.list' or more explicitly,.interval_list`, and look like this:

@HD     VN:1.0  SO:coordinate
@SQ     SN:1    LN:249250621    AS:GRCh37       UR:http://www.broadinstitute.org/ftp/pub/seq/references/Homo_sapiens_assembly19.fasta   M5:1b22b98cdeb4a9304cb5d48026a85128     SP:Homo Sapiens
@SQ     SN:2    LN:243199373    AS:GRCh37       UR:http://www.broadinstitute.org/ftp/pub/seq/references/Homo_sapiens_assembly19.fasta   M5:a0d9851da00400dec1098a9255ac712e     SP:Homo Sapiens
1       30366   30503   +       target_1
1       69089   70010   +       target_2
1       367657  368599  +       target_3
1       621094  622036  +       target_4
1       861320  861395  +       target_5
1       865533  865718  +       target_6

consisting of aSAM-file-like sequence dictionary (the header), and targets in the form of <chr> <start> <stop> + <target_name>. These interval lists are tab-delimited. They are also 1-based (first position in the genome is position 1, not position 0). The easiest way to create such a file is to combine your reference file's sequence dictionary (the file stored alongside the reference fasta file with the .dict extension) and your intervals into one file.

You can also specify a list of intervals formatted as <chr>:<start>-<stop> (one interval per line). No sequence dictionary is necessary. This file format also uses 1-based coordinates.

Finally, we also accept BED style interval lists. Warning: this file format is 0-based for the start coordinates, so coordinates taken from 1-based formats should be offset by 1.

4. Reference Ordered Data (ROD) file formats

The GATK can associate arbitrary reference ordered data (ROD) files with named tracks for all tools. Some tools require specific ROD data files for processing, and developers are free to write tools that access arbitrary data sets using the ROD interface. The general ROD system has the following syntax:

-argumentName:name,type file

Where name is the name in the GATK tool (like "eval" in VariantEval), type is the type of the file, such as VCF or dbSNP, and file is the path to the file containing the ROD data.

The GATK supports several common file formats for reading ROD data:

  • VCF : VCF type, the recommended format for representing variant loci and genotype calls. The GATK will only process valid VCF files; VCFTools provides the official VCF validator. See here for a useful poster detailing the VCF specification.
  • UCSC formated dbSNP : dbSNP type, UCSC dbSNP database output
  • BED : BED type, a general purpose format for representing genomic interval data, useful for masks and other interval outputs. Please note that the bed format is 0-based while most other formats are 1-based.

Note that we no longer support the PED format. See here for converting .ped files to VCF.

If you need additional information on VCF files, please see our FAQs on VCF files here and here.

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