Figure 1

Bioinformatics analysis workflow of WEP pipeline. The WEP analysis pipeline consists of 11 major steps, some of which are further divided into sub-components. For each input file a quality control is performed. This step includes both the application of filters and trimmers (1) and the calculation of quality statistics on raw and processed sequences (2). In case of PE reads WEP processes both forward and reverse reads simultaneously and exports the filtered reads in a separate file, keeping the pairing information intact. Unpaired reads passing quality filters are also provided in a different output file. These filtered read are then aligned to their reference genome (3). The two paired files are mapped together (PE alignment), while the unpaired file is aligned individually (SE alignment); for each one is produced a SAM file. Afterwards, WEP executes a conversion step (4) where the resulting SAM files are converted in BAM format, sorted and merged together in a single file. Read groups are assigned and the file is indexed. In the variant preprocessing steps, the duplicates are removed (5), the reads are realigned around indels and the base quality score are recalibrated (6). Furthermore, WEP performs alignment statistics and enrichment target metrics (7). At this point, SNPs and indels are detected (8), several annotation are added to each variant (9) and the results are automatically parsed in optimized databases (10). At the end, WEP collects several information and statistics generated during the pipeline run and generates web pages and reports (11) useful to interpret the performed analysis.