(i) Arguably the most established genome analysis toolkit (ii) Includes tools such as Unified Genotyper (SNP/genotype caller), variant filtration (for filtering SNPs), and variant Recalibrator (for SNP quality scores) (iii) Well documented with forums (iv) Input: SAM format (v) Output: VCF format
(i) Computes genotype likelihoods (ii) BCFtools calls SNP and genotypes (iii) Successfully used in many WGS and WES projects such as the 1000 Genomes Project [17]. (iv) Offers additional features such as viewing alignments and conversion of SAM to a BAM format
(i) Identifies copy number variations (CNVs) between case and controls from sequencing data (ii) R script available for visualising CNVs by chromosome (iii) Input format: BAM
(i) Calls SNPs and indels for WES data (ii) Requires BAM file as input (iii) Output: VCF format
GATK, SOAPsnp, and SAMTools have constantly been cited in large genetic association projects indicating their ease of use, reliability, and functionality. However, this is also helped by the fact that they have additional features. There are other tools such as Beagle [68], IMPUTE2 [86], and MaCH [87] which have modules for SNP and genotype calling but are mostly used for their main purpose such as imputation and haplotype phasing.