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Updated: Jul 23, 2025

Targeted Next-generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics Pipeline to Evaluate Genetic Determinants of Constitutional Disease
Published on: April 4, 2018
SNPeffect 5.0: large-scale structural phenotyping of protein coding variants extracted from next-generation
Kobe Janssen1,2, Ramon Duran-Romaña1,2, Guy Bottu3
1Switch Laboratory, VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research, Herestraat 49, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
This study introduces an automated bioinformatics pipeline to analyze the impact of missense genetic variants on protein stability and aggregation. The tool integrates multiple predictors and structural databases for comprehensive analysis from next-generation sequencing data.
Area of Science:
- Genomics
- Bioinformatics
- Computational Biology
Background:
- Next-generation sequencing (NGS) generates numerous genetic alterations, including missense variants that change amino acids.
- These variants can destabilize proteins, increasing risks of misfolding and aggregation.
- Existing tools for variant effect prediction lack a unified pipeline starting from NGS data.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop an automated and parallelized bioinformatics pipeline for analyzing missense variant impacts.
- To assess effects on protein aggregation propensity and structural stability.
- To enable structural phenotyping directly from sequencing data.
Main Methods:
- Input: Variant Call Format (VCF) files from NGS data.
- Analysis: Integrated pipeline using FoldX (stability), TANGO and WALTZ (aggregation).
- Structural Data: AlphaFold Protein Structure Database integration for enhanced coverage.
Main Results:
- The pipeline automates the analysis of missense variant effects on protein structure and function.
- It leverages the AlphaFold database for extensive structural stability predictions.
- Human proteome analysis for sample-specific stability and damage is enabled.
Conclusions:
- A novel bioinformatics pipeline is presented for structural phenotyping from sequencing data.
- The pipeline integrates FoldX, TANGO, WALTZ, and AlphaFold database for comprehensive analysis.
- Freely available for academic users, the pipeline requires a computer cluster for operation.
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