pyAmpli: an amplicon-based variant filter pipeline for targeted resequencing data

BACKGROUND: Haloplex targeted resequencing is a popular method to analyze both germline and somatic variants in gene panels. However, involved wet-lab procedures may introduce false positives that need to be considered in subsequent data-analysis. No variant filtering rationale addressing amplicon enrichment related systematic errors, in the form of an all-in-one package, exists to our knowledge. RESULTS: We present pyAmpli, a platform independent parallelized Python package that implements an amplicon-based germline and somatic variant filtering strategy for Haloplex data. pyAmpli can filter variants for systematic errors by user pre-defined criteria. We show that pyAmpli significantly increases specificity, without reducing sensitivity, essential for reporting true positive clinical relevant mutations in gene panel data. CONCLUSIONS: pyAmpli is an easy-to-use software tool which increases the true positive variant call rate in targeted resequencing data. It specifically reduces errors related to PCR-based enrichment of targeted regions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12859-017-1985-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.