Ensembl Variation - Predicted data
Ensembl imports variant data from a variety of different sources, as described on the Data description page. Below we give more information about how Ensembl predicts the effects of variants. Ensembl calculates the:
- Linkage disequilibrium information
- Tagged variants
Calculated variant consequences
For each variant that is mapped to the reference genome, we identify each Ensembl transcript that overlap the variant. We then use a rule-based approach to predict the effects that each allele of the variant may have on the transcript. The set of consequence terms, defined by the Sequence Ontology (SO), that can be currently assigned to each combination of an allele and a transcript is shown in the table below. Note that each allele of each variant may have a different effect in different transcripts.
This approach is applied to all germline variants and somatic mutations stored in the Ensembl variation databases (though we do not yet currently calculate consequences for structural variants). The resulting consequence type calls, along with information determined as part of the process, such as the cDNA and CDS coordinates, and the affected codons and amino acids in coding transcripts, are stored in the Ensembl Variation database and displayed on the website. You can use this pipeline for your own data via the VEP.
We used SO terms by default since the Ensembl release 68. There is an equivalent
SO term for each of our old Ensembl terms but in a few cases there is a more specific
SO term available, as shown in the table below. If you have text files or VEP outputs
with our old Ensembl terms, you can easily update these to using the SO terms by running the following
perl convert_ensembl_to_SO_consequences.pl input.txt > converted.txt
The terms in the table below are shown in order of severity (more severe to less severe) as estimated by Ensembl, and this ordering is used on the website summary views. This ordering is necessarily subjective and API and VEP users can always get the full set of consequences for each allele and make their own severity judgement. The IMPACT rating is a separate rating given for compatibility with other variant annotation tools (e.g. snpEff).
|*||SO term||SO description||SO accession||Display term||IMPACT|
|transcript_ablation||A feature ablation whereby the deleted region includes a transcript feature||SO:0001893||Transcript ablation||HIGH|
|splice_acceptor_variant||A splice variant that changes the 2 base region at the 3' end of an intron||SO:0001574||Splice acceptor variant||HIGH|
|splice_donor_variant||A splice variant that changes the 2 base region at the 5' end of an intron||SO:0001575||Splice donor variant||HIGH|
|stop_gained||A sequence variant whereby at least one base of a codon is changed, resulting in a premature stop codon, leading to a shortened transcript||SO:0001587||Stop gained||HIGH|
|frameshift_variant||A sequence variant which causes a disruption of the translational reading frame, because the number of nucleotides inserted or deleted is not a multiple of three||SO:0001589||Frameshift variant||HIGH|
|stop_lost||A sequence variant where at least one base of the terminator codon (stop) is changed, resulting in an elongated transcript||SO:0001578||Stop lost||HIGH|
|start_lost||A codon variant that changes at least one base of the canonical start codo||SO:0002012||Start lost||HIGH|
|transcript_amplification||A feature amplification of a region containing a transcript||SO:0001889||Transcript amplification||HIGH|
|inframe_insertion||An inframe non synonymous variant that inserts bases into in the coding sequenc||SO:0001821||Inframe insertion||MODERATE|
|inframe_deletion||An inframe non synonymous variant that deletes bases from the coding sequenc||SO:0001822||Inframe deletion||MODERATE|
|missense_variant||A sequence variant, that changes one or more bases, resulting in a different amino acid sequence but where the length is preserved||SO:0001583||Missense variant||MODERATE|
|protein_altering_variant||A sequence_variant which is predicted to change the protein encoded in the coding sequence||SO:0001818||Protein altering variant||MODERATE|
|splice_region_variant||A sequence variant in which a change has occurred within the region of the splice site, either within 1-3 bases of the exon or 3-8 bases of the intron||SO:0001630||Splice region variant||LOW|
|incomplete_terminal_codon_variant||A sequence variant where at least one base of the final codon of an incompletely annotated transcript is changed||SO:0001626||Incomplete terminal codon variant||LOW|
|stop_retained_variant||A sequence variant where at least one base in the terminator codon is changed, but the terminator remains||SO:0001567||Stop retained variant||LOW|
|synonymous_variant||A sequence variant where there is no resulting change to the encoded amino acid||SO:0001819||Synonymous variant||LOW|
|coding_sequence_variant||A sequence variant that changes the coding sequence||SO:0001580||Coding sequence variant||MODIFIER|
|mature_miRNA_variant||A transcript variant located with the sequence of the mature miRNA||SO:0001620||Mature miRNA variant||MODIFIER|
|5_prime_UTR_variant||A UTR variant of the 5' UTR||SO:0001623||5 prime UTR variant||MODIFIER|
|3_prime_UTR_variant||A UTR variant of the 3' UTR||SO:0001624||3 prime UTR variant||MODIFIER|
|non_coding_transcript_exon_variant||A sequence variant that changes non-coding exon sequence in a non-coding transcript||SO:0001792||Non coding transcript exon variant||MODIFIER|
|intron_variant||A transcript variant occurring within an intron||SO:0001627||Intron variant||MODIFIER|
|NMD_transcript_variant||A variant in a transcript that is the target of NMD||SO:0001621||NMD transcript variant||MODIFIER|
|non_coding_transcript_variant||A transcript variant of a non coding RNA gene||SO:0001619||Non coding transcript variant||MODIFIER|
|upstream_gene_variant||A sequence variant located 5' of a gene||SO:0001631||Upstream gene variant||MODIFIER|
|downstream_gene_variant||A sequence variant located 3' of a gene||SO:0001632||Downstream gene variant||MODIFIER|
|TFBS_ablation||A feature ablation whereby the deleted region includes a transcription factor binding site||SO:0001892||TFBS ablation||MODIFIER|
|TFBS_amplification||A feature amplification of a region containing a transcription factor binding site||SO:0001892||TFBS amplification||MODIFIER|
|TF_binding_site_variant||A sequence variant located within a transcription factor binding site||SO:0001782||TF binding site variant||MODIFIER|
|regulatory_region_ablation||A feature ablation whereby the deleted region includes a regulatory region||SO:0001894||Regulatory region ablation||MODERATE|
|regulatory_region_amplification||A feature amplification of a region containing a regulatory region||SO:0001891||Regulatory region amplification||MODIFIER|
|feature_elongation||A sequence variant located within a regulatory region||SO:0001907||Feature elongation||MODIFIER|
|regulatory_region_variant||A sequence variant located within a regulatory region||SO:0001566||Regulatory region variant||MODIFIER|
|feature_truncation||A sequence variant that causes the reduction of a genomic feature, with regard to the reference sequence||SO:0001906||Feature truncation||MODIFIER|
|intergenic_variant||A sequence variant located in the intergenic region, between genes||SO:0001628||Intergenic variant||MODIFIER|
* Corresponding colours for the Ensembl web displays.
Protein function predictions
For human mutations that are predicted to result in an amino acid substitution we provide SIFT and PolyPhen predictions for the effect of this substitution on protein function. We compute the predictions for each of these tools for all possible single amino acid substitutions in the Ensembl human proteome. This means we can provide predictions for novel mutations for VEP and API users. We were able to compute predictions from at least one tool for over 95% of the human proteins in Ensembl. SIFT predictions are also available for chicken, cow, dog, horse, mouse, pig, rat sheep and zebrafish.
These tools are developed by external groups and we provide a brief explanation of the approach each takes below, and how we run it in Ensembl. For much more detail please see the representative papers listed below, and the relevant publications available on each tool's website.
Prediction data format
The SIFT and PolyPhen predictions are precomputed and stored in the variation databases and predictions are accessible in the variation API by using the sift_prediction, sift_score, polyphen_prediction and polyphen_score methods on a Bio::EnsEMBL::Variation::TranscriptVariationAllele object. For users wanting to access the complete set of predictions from the MySQL database or API, an explanation of the format used is provided here.
The predictions and associated scores are stored as a matrix, with a column for each possible alternate amino acid and a row for each position in the translation. Each prediction for a position and amino acid is stored as a 2-byte value which encodes both the qualitative prediction and score encoded as described below. A simple example matrix is shown in the figure below, though note we only show the decoded score rather than the actual binary value stored in the database.
Prediction matrices can be fetched and manipulated in a user-friendly manner using the variation API, specifically using the ProteinFunctionPredictionMatrixAdaptor which allows you to fetch a prediction matrix using either a transcript or a translation stable ID. This adaptor returns a ProteinFunctionPredictionMatrix object and you can use the get_prediction method to retrieve a prediction for a given position and amino acid. Users who want to use entire matrices should use the deserialize method to decode an entire binary formatted matrix into a simple Perl hash. Please refer to the API documentation for both of these classes for more details. For users who require direct access to the MySQL database (for instance because they are accessing the database in a language other than Perl) we provide a description of the binary format used below.
Prediction matrices for each translation from each of SIFT and PolyPhen are stored in the protein_function_predictions table. The analysis used to calculate the predictions is identified in the analysis_attrib_id column which refers to a value stored in the attrib table, and the protein sequence the predictions apply to is identified by the translation_md5_id column which refers to a hexadecimal MD5 hash of the sequence stored in the translation_md5 table. The prediction matrices are stored in the prediction_matrix column as a gzip compressed binary string. Once uncompressed, this string contains a 40 byte substring for each row in the matrix concatenated together in position order. Each row is composed of 20 2-byte predictions, one for each possible alternative amino acid in alphabetical order, though note that the value for the amino acid that matches the reference amino acid is identified as a 2-byte value with all bits set, or 0xFFFF in hexadecimal notation. The prediction itself is packed as a 16 bit little-endian ("VAX" order, or "v" format if using the perl pack subroutine) unsigned short value. The top 2 bits of this short are used to encode the qualitative prediction (PolyPhen has 4 possible values, while SIFT has just 2), and the bottom 10 bits are used to encode the prediction score. To decode the qualitative prediction you should mask off all bits except the top 2, and shift the resulting short right by 14 bits and treat this as an integer between 0 and 3. The corresponding prediction can then be looked up in the table below. To decode the prediction score you should mask off the top 6 bits and the resulting value can be treated as a number between 0 and 1000, which should be divided by 1000 to give a 3 decimal place score (casting to a floating point type if necessary). Bits 11-14 are not used, except to encode the "same as reference" dummy prediction 0xFFFF.
A diagram of the encoding scheme is shown above. In this example from a polyphen prediction, the top prediction bits are 0b01 which in decimal is the number 1, which corresponds to "possibly damaging" in the table below. The score bits are 0b1110001010 which in decimal is the number 906, which when divided by 1000, gives a score of 0.906.
|Tool||Numerical value||Qualitative prediction|
To retrieve a prediction for a particular amino acid substitution at a given position in a translation, first you must retrieve the binary matrix from the database and uncompress it using gzip. You can calculate the offset into this string by multiplying the desired position (starting at 0) by 20 and then adding the index of the desired amino acid in an alphabetical ordering of amino acids (also starting at 0), and then multiply this value by 2 to take into account the fact that each prediction uses 2 bytes. Each matrix also includes a 3 byte header used check if the data is corrupted etc. so you will also need to add 3 to the calculated offset. The 2 bytes at the calculated position can then be extracted and the approach described above can be used to retrieve the prediction and score. A perl implementation of this scheme can be found in the Bio::EnsEMBL::Variation::ProteinFunctionPredictionMatrix module in the variation API and should hopefully inform attempts to reimplement this scheme in other languages.
Adzhubei IA, Schmidt S, Peshkin L, Ramensky VE, Gerasimova A, Bork P, Kondrashov AS, Sunyaev SR.
A method and server for predicting damaging missense mutations
Nature Methods 7(4):248-249 (2010)
Kumar P, Henikoff S, Ng PC.
Predicting the effects of coding non-synonymous variants on protein function using the SIFT algorithm
Nature Protocols 4(8):1073-1081 (2009)
Gonzalez-Perez A, Lopez-Bigas N.
Improving the assessment of the outcome of non-synonymous SNVs with a Consensus deleteriousness score (Condel)
Am J Hum Genet 88(4):440-449 (2011)