StructuralVariantAnnotation: A R/Bioconductor foundation for a caller-agnostic structural variant software ecosystem

Abstract

Summary: StructuralVariantAnnotation is an R/Bioconductor package that provides a framework for decoupling downstream analysis of structural variant breakpoints from upstream variant calling methods. It standardizes the representational format from BEDPE, or any of the three different notations supported by VCF into a breakpoint GRanges data structure suitable for use by the wider Bioconductor ecosystem. It handles both transitive breakpoints and duplication/insertion notational differences of identical variants - both common scenarios when comparing short/long read-based call sets that confound downstream analysis. StructuralVariantAnnotation provides the caller-agnostic foundation needed for a R/Bioconductor ecosystem of structural variant annotation, classification and interpretation tools able to handle both simple and complex genomic rearrangements.