Variant

This element should be used to describe candidate variants or diagnosed causative variants. There is currently no standard variant nomenclature that can represent all kinds of genetic variation that is relevant to human medicine, science, and model organisms. Therefore, we represent variants using the keyword oneof, which is used in protobuf for an item with many optional fields where at most one field will be set at the same time. Variant messages contain an allele and the zygosity of the allele.

Alleles can be listed using HGVS, VCF, SPDI or ISCN notation. The phenopacket schema will implement the GA4GH Variation Representation Specification once that is mature. The VR-Spec will be the recommended option in some settings.

The Variant element itself is an optional element of a Phenopacket or Biosample. If it is present, the Phenopacket standard has the following requirements.

Alleles can refer to external sources, for example the ClinGen allele registry, ClinVar, dbSNP, dbVAR etc. using the id field. It is RECOMMENDED to use a CURIE identifier and corresponding Resource.

n.b. phase information for alleles are not represented in this model.

Data model

Field Type Status Description
allele allele required one of the Allele types described below
zygosity OntologyClass recommended See zygosity below

Example

{
    "spdiAllele": {
      "id": "clinvar:13294"
      "seqId": "NC_000010.10",
      "position": 123256214,
      "deletedSequence": "T",
      "insertedSequence": "G"
    },
    "zygosity": {
      "id": "GENO:0000135",
      "label": "heterozygous"
    }
}

zygosity

The zygosity of the variant as determined in all of the samples represented in this Phenopacket is represented using a list of terms taken from the Genotype Ontology (GENO). For instance, if a variant affects one of two alleles at a certain locus, we could record the zygosity using the term heterozygous (GENO:0000135).

allele

The allele element is required and can be one and only one of HgvsAllele, VcfAlelle, SpdiAllele or IcsnAllele.

HgvsAllele

This element is used to describe an allele according to the nomenclature of the Human Geneome Variation Society (HGVS). For instance, NM_000226.3:c.470T>G indicates that a T at position 470 of the sequence represented by version 3 of NM_000226 (which is the mRNA of the human keratin 9 gene KRT9).

We recommend using a tool such as VariantValidator or Mutalyzer to validate the HGVS string. See the HGVS recommendations for details about the HGVS nomenclature.

Data model

Field Type Status Description
id string recommended An arbitrary identifier
hgvs string required NM_000226.3:c.470T>G

Example

{
    "id": "",
    "hgvs": "NM_000226.3:c.470T>G"
}

VcfAllele

This element is used to describe variants using the Variant Call Format, which is in near universal use for exome, genome, and other Next-Generation-Sequencing-based variant calling. It is an appropriate option to use for variants reported according to their chromosomal location as derived from a VCF file.

In the Phenopacket format, it is expected that one VcfAllele message described a single allele (in contrast to the actual VCF format that allows multiple alleles at the same position to be reported on the same line; to report these in Phenopacket format, two variant messages would be required).

For structural variation the INFO field should contain the relevant information . In general, the info field should only be used to report structural variants and it is not expected that the Phenopacket will report the contents of the info field for single nucleotide and other small variants.

Data model

Field Type Status Description
genome_assembly string required GRCh38
id string recommended An arbitrary identifier
chr string required chr2
pos int32 required 134327882
re string required A
alt string required C
info string optional END=43500;SVTYPE=DUP;CHR2=1;SVLEN=29000;

Example

{
    "genome_assembly": "GRCh38",
    "chr": "2",
    "id": ".",
    "pos": 134327882,
    "ref": "A",
    "alt": "<DUP>",
    "info": "END=43500;SVTYPE=DUP;CHR2=1;SVLEN=29000;",
}

SpdiAllele

This option can be used as an alternative to the VcfAllele, and describes variants using the Sequence Position Deletion Insertion (SPDI) notation. We recommend that users familiarize themselves with this relatively new notation, which differs in important ways from other standards such as VCF and HGVS.

Tools for interconversion between SPDI, HGVS and VCF exist at the NCBI.

SPDI stands for

  1. S = SequenceId
  2. P = Position , a 0-based coordinate for where the Deleted Sequence starts
  3. D = DeletedSequence , sequence for the deletion, can be empty
  4. I = InsertedSequence , sequence for the insertion, can be empty

For instance, Seq1:4:A:G refers to a single nucleotide variant at the fifth nucleotide ( nucleotide 4 according to zero-based numbering) from an A to a G. See the SPDI webpage for more examples.

The SPDI notation represents variation as deletion of a sequence (D) at a given position (P) in reference sequence (S) followed by insertion of a replacement sequence (I) at that same position. Position 0 indicates a deletion that starts immediately before the first nucleotide, and position 1 represents a deletion interval that starts between the first and second residues, and so on. Either the deleted or the inserted interval can be empty, resulting a pure insertion or deletion.

Note that the deleted and inserted sequences in SPDI are all written on the positive strand for two-stranded molecules.

Data model

Field Type Status Description
id string recommended An arbitrary identifier
seq_id string required Seq1
position int32 required 4
deleted_sequence string required A
inserted_sequence string required G

Example

{
    "id": 1,
    "seqId": "NC_000001.10",
    "position": 12346,
    "deletedSequence": "",
    "insertedSequence": "T"
}

IscnAllele

This element can be used to describe cytogenetic anomalies according to the International System for Human Cytogenetic Nomenclature (ISCN), an international standard for human chromosome nomenclature, which includes band names, symbols and abbreviated terms used in the description of human chromosome and chromosome abnormalities.

For example del(6)(q23q24) describes a deletion from band q23 to q24 on chromosome 6.

Data model

Field Type Status Description
id string recommended An arbitrary identifier
iscn string required t(8;9;11)(q12;p24;p12)

Example

{
  "id": "ISCN:12345",
  "iscn": "t(8;9;11)(q12;p24;p12)"
}