Binaries of ngs-bits are available via Bioconda. Alternatively, ngs-bits can be built from sources:

• Binaries for Linux/macOS
• From sources for Linux/macOS
• From sources for Windows

Changes already implemented in GIT master for next release:

• none so far.

Changes in release 2021_06:

• General: Improved GRCh38 support in several tools.
• General: Using BGZIP for compressed VCFs now to allow indexing them with tabix.
• VcfAnnotateFromBed: Made separator configurable; Added check for separator in source BED file; Fixed broken output VCF if input has no FORMAT column.
• VcfAnnotateFromVcf: Fixed crash in VCF header parser.
• NGSDExportSamples: Added ancestry column.
• SampleAncestry: Improved runtime and memory use.
• SampleGender: Improved runtime for algorithm 'hetx'.
• SomaticQC: Added support for mutect2.
• NGSD:
  • Added disease status 'Unclear' to table 'sample'.
  • Added table 'processed_sample_ancestry'.
  • Added percent occupied to 'runqc_lane' (for Illumina NovaSeq).

For older releases see the releases page.

Please report any issues or questions to the ngs-bits issue tracker.

Have a look at the ECCB'2018 poster.

The documentation of individual tools is linked in the tools list below.
For some tools the documentation pages contain only the command-line help, for other tools they contain more information.

ngs-bits is provided under the MIT license and is based on other open source software:

• htslib for HTS data format support (BAM, VCF, ...)
• SimpleCrypt for weak encryption
• QR-Code-generator for QR code generation

ngs-bits contains a lot of tools that are used for NGS-based diagnostics in our institute.

Some of the tools need the NGSD, a database that contains for example gene, transcript and exon data.
Installation instructions for the NGSD can be found here.

• SeqPurge - A highly-sensitive adapter trimmer for paired-end short-read data.
• SampleSimilarity - Calculates pairwise sample similarity metrics from VCF/BAM files.
• SampleGender - Determines sample gender based on a BAM file.
• SampleAncestry - Estimates the ancestry of a sample based on variants.
• CnvHunter - CNV detection from targeted resequencing data using non-matched control samples.
• RohHunter - ROH detection based on a variant list annotated with AF values.
• UpdHunter - UPD detection from trio variant data.

The default output format of the quality control tools is qcML, an XML-based format for -omics quality control, that consists of an XML schema, which defined the overall structure of the format, and an ontology which defines the QC metrics that can be used.

• ReadQC - Quality control tool for FASTQ files.
• MappingQC - Quality control tool for a BAM file.
• VariantQC - Quality control tool for a VCF file.
• SomaticQC - Quality control tool for tumor-normal pairs (paper and example output data).
• TrioMaternalContamination - Detects maternal contamination of a child using SNPs from parents.

• BamClipOverlap - (Soft-)Clips paired-end reads that overlap.
• BamDownsample - Downsamples a BAM file to the given percentage of reads.
• BamFilter - Filters a BAM file by multiple criteria.
• BamHighCoverage - Determines high-coverage regions in a BAM file.
• BamToFastq - Converts a BAM file to FASTQ files (paired-end only).

• BedAdd - Merges regions from several BED files.
• BedAnnotateFromBed - Annotates BED file regions with information from a second BED file.
• BedAnnotateGC - Annnotates the regions in a BED file with GC content.
• BedAnnotateGenes - Annotates BED file regions with gene names (needs NGSD).
• BedChunk - Splits regions in a BED file to chunks of a desired size.
• BedCoverage - Annotates the regions in a BED file with the average coverage in one or several BAM files.
• BedExtend - Extends the regions in a BED file by n bases.
• BedGeneOverlap - Calculates how much of each overlapping gene is covered (needs NGSD).
• BedHighCoverage - Detects high-coverage regions from a BAM file.
• BedInfo - Prints summary information about a BED file.
• BedIntersect - Intersects two BED files.
• BedLowCoverage - Calcualtes regions of low coverage based on a input BED and BAM file.
• BedMerge - Merges overlapping regions in a BED file.
• BedReadCount - Annoates the regions in a BED file with the read count from a BAM file.
• BedShrink - Shrinks the regions in a BED file by n bases.
• BedSort - Sorts the regions in a BED file
• BedSubtract - Subracts one BED file from another BED file.
• BedToFasta - Converts BED file to a FASTA file (based on the reference genome).

• FastqAddBarcode - Adds sequences from separate FASTQ as barcodes to read IDs.
• FastqConvert - Converts the quality scores from Illumina 1.5 offset to Sanger/Illumina 1.8 offset.
• FastqConcat - Concatinates several FASTQ files into one output FASTQ file.
• FastqDownsample - Downsamples paired-end FASTQ files.
• FastqExtract - Extracts reads from a FASTQ file according to an ID list.
• FastqExtractBarcode - Moves molecular barcodes of reads to a separate file.
• FastqExtractUMI - Moves unique moleculare identifier from read sequence to read ID.
• FastqFormat - Determines the quality score offset of a FASTQ file.
• FastqList - Lists read IDs and base counts.
• FastqMidParser - Counts the number of occurances of each MID/index/barcode in a FASTQ file.
• FastqToFasta - Converts FASTQ to FASTA format.
• FastqTrim - Trims start/end bases from the reads in a FASTQ file.

• VcfAnnotateFromBed - Annotates the INFO column of a VCF with data from a BED file.
• VcfAnnotateFromVcf - Annotates the INFO column of a VCF with data from another VCF file (or multiple VCF files if config file is provided)
• VcfBreakMulti - Breaks multi-allelic variants into several lines, making sure that allele-specific INFO/SAMPLE fields are still valid.
• VcfCheck - Checks a VCF file for errors.
• VcfExtractSamples - Extract one or several samples from a VCF file.
• VcfFilter - Filters a VCF based on the given criteria.
• VcfLeftNormalize - Normalizes all variants and shifts indels to the left in a VCF file.
• VcfSort - Sorts variant lists according to chromosomal position.
• VcfStreamSort - Sorts entries of a VCF file according to genomic position using a stream.
• VcfToBedpe - Converts a VCF file containing structural variants to BEDPE format.
• VcfToTsv - Converts a VCF file to a tab-separated text file.

• BedpeAnnotateFromBed - Annotates a BEDPE file with information from a BED file.
• BedpeFilter - Filters a BEDPE file by region.
• BedpeGeneAnnotation - Annotates a BEDPE file with gene information from the NGSD (needs NGSD).
• BedpeToBed - Converts a BEDPE file into BED file.
• NGSDAnnotateSV - Annotates the structural variants of a given BEDPE file by the NGSD counts (needs NGSD).
• SvFilterAnnotations - Filter a structural variant list in BEDPE format based on variant annotations.

• GenesToApproved - Replaces gene symbols by approved symbols using the HGNC database (needs NGSD).
• GenesToBed - Converts a text file with gene names to a BED file (needs NGSD).
• NGSDExportGenes - Lists genes from NGSD (needs NGSD).

• PhenotypesToGenes - Converts a phenotype list to a list of matching genes (needs NGSD).
• PhenotypeSubtree - Returns all sub-phenotype of a given phenotype (needs NGSD).

• PERsim - Paired-end read simulator for Illumina reads.
• FastaInfo - Basic info on a FASTA file.