Pangolin

Pangolin is a deep-learning based method for predicting splice site strengths (for details, see Zeng and Li, Genome Biology 2022). It is available as a command-line tool that can be run on a VCF or CSV file containing variants of interest; Pangolin will predict changes in splice site strength due to each variant, and return a file of the same format. Pangolin's models can also be used with custom sequences.

Pangolin can be run on Google Colab, which provides free acess to GPUs and other computing resources: https://colab.research.google.com/github/tkzeng/Pangolin/blob/main/PangolinColab.ipynb

See below for information on usage and local installation.

Installation

• Prerequisites: Python 3.6 or higher and conda, which can both be installed using Miniconda: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html
• Install PyTorch: https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/
  • If a supported GPU is available, installation with GPU support is recommended (choose an option under "Compute Platform")
• Install other dependencies:

  conda install -c conda-forge pyvcf
  pip install gffutils biopython pandas pyfastx
  

• Install Pangolin:

  git clone https://github.com/tkzeng/Pangolin.git
  cd Pangolin
  pip install .
  

Usage (command-line)

1. Create an annotation database from a GTF file using scripts/create_db.py. This will take several minutes. By default, it looks for the Ensembl_canonical tag to identify a primary transcript for each gene. Example usage:

   python scripts/create_db.py gencode.v38lift37.annotation.gtf.gz
   # output: gencode.v38lift37.annotation.db
   

   Annotation databases for GENCODE Release 38 (released 5/5/21) can be downloaded from: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6zo0aegoalvgd9f/AADWN_cGIWpvVN9BYJ37vGmZa?dl=0

   • gencode.v38.annotation.db: GENCODE gene annotations for GRCh38 for transcripts with the Ensembl_canonical tag

     # download annotation file
     wget https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6zo0aegoalvgd9f/AADOhGYJo8tbUhpscp3wSFj6a/gencode.v38.annotation.db
     

   • gencode.v38lift37.annotation.db: GENCODE gene annotations for GRCh38 (lifted to GRCh37) for transcripts with the Ensembl_canonical, appris_principal, appris_candidate, or appris_candidate_longest tags

     # download annotation file
     wget https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6zo0aegoalvgd9f/AAA9Q90Pi1UqSzX99R_NM803a/gencode.v38lift37.annotation.db
     

2. Run Pangolin on a VCF or CSV file containing a list of variants. Under default settings, the maximum increase and decrease in score within 50 bases of the variant, along with their positions, will be reported. Format in the output file: gene|pos:largest_increase|pos:largest_decrease|

   • Only substitutions and simple insertions/deletions (either the REF or ALT field is a single base) are currently supported.
   • Variants are skipped if: they are not contained in a gene, defined by the annotation file; are within 5000 bases of the chromosome ends; are deletions larger than twice the input parameter -d; or do not match sequences from the reference FASTA file.

   Example usage:

   pangolin examples/brca.vcf GRCh37.primary_assembly.genome.fa.gz gencode.v38lift37.annotation.db brca_pangolin
   

   See full options below:

   usage: pangolin [-h] [-c COLUMN_IDS] [-m {False,True}] [-s SCORE_CUTOFF] [-d DISTANCE] variant_file reference_file annotation_file output_file
   
   positional arguments:
     variant_file          VCF or CSV file with a header (see COLUMN_IDS option).
     reference_file        FASTA file containing a reference genome sequence.
     annotation_file       gffutils database file. Can be generated using create_db.py.
     output_file           Prefix for output file. Will be a VCF/CSV if variant_file is VCF/CSV.
   
   optional arguments:
     -h, --help            show this help message and exit
     -c COLUMN_IDS, --column_ids COLUMN_IDS
                           (If variant_file is a CSV) Column IDs for: chromosome, variant position, reference bases, and alternative bases. Separate IDs by commas. (Default: CHROM,POS,REF,ALT)
     -m {False,True}, --mask {False,True}
                           If True, splice gains (increases in score) at annotated splice sites and splice losses (decreases in score) at unannotated splice sites will be set to 0. (Default: True)
     -s SCORE_CUTOFF, --score_cutoff SCORE_CUTOFF
                           Output all sites with absolute predicted change in score >= cutoff, instead of only the maximum loss/gain sites.
     -d DISTANCE, --distance DISTANCE
                           Number of bases on either side of the variant for which splice scores should be calculated. (Default: 50)
   

Usage (custom)

See scripts/custom_usage.py

Citation

If you use Pangolin, please cite:

Zeng, T., Li, Y.I. Predicting RNA splicing from DNA sequence using Pangolin. Genome Biol 23, 103 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-022-02664-4