Optimized pipeline of MuTect and GATK tools to improve the detection of somatic single nucleotide polymorphisms in whole-exome sequencing data

BACKGROUND: Detecting somatic mutations in whole exome sequencing data of cancer samples has become a popular approach for profiling cancer development, progression and chemotherapy resistance. Several studies have proposed software packages, filters and parametrizations. However, many research groups reported low concordance among different methods. We aimed to develop a pipeline which detects a wide range of single nucleotide mutations with high validation rates. We combined two standard tools – Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) and MuTect – to create the GATK-LOD(N) method. As proof of principle, we applied our pipeline to exome sequencing data of hematological (Acute Myeloid and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemias) and solid (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor and Lung Adenocarcinoma) tumors. We performed experiments on simulated data to test the sensitivity and specificity of our pipeline. RESULTS: The software MuTect presented the highest validation rate (90 %) for mutation detection, but limited number of somatic mutations detected. The GATK detected a high number of mutations but with low specificity. The GATK-LOD(N) increased the performance of the GATK variant detection (from 5 of 14 to 3 of 4 confirmed variants), while preserving mutations not detected by MuTect. However, GATK-LOD(N) filtered more variants in the hematological samples than in the solid tumors. Experiments in simulated data demonstrated that GATK-LOD(N) increased both specificity and sensitivity of GATK results. CONCLUSION: We presented a pipeline that detects a wide range of somatic single nucleotide variants, with good validation rates, from exome sequencing data of cancer samples. We also showed the advantage of combining standard algorithms to create the GATK-LOD(N) method, that increased specificity and sensitivity of GATK results. This pipeline can be helpful in discovery studies aimed to profile the somatic mutational landscape of cancer genomes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-016-1190-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.