Author Archives: Golden Helix

Meet Autumn Laughbaum: Biostatistician

         January 9, 2013

As a senior studying statistics at Montana State University, I was fortunate to be granted the opportunity to intern with the development team at a local software company.  I was even more fortunate when this internship turned into full-time employment after I graduated. Working on a team with extremely talented individuals, I realized the significant impact our company makes through… Read more »

New Plant and Animal Genomes and Tracks Now Available!

         January 3, 2013

Happy new year! We hope all of our readers, clients, and users had a great holiday season filled with friends and family! While Golden Helix did take a break from blogging in December, we’ve still been pretty busy bringing you new and exciting things. We’re pleased to announce the addition of genome maps and annotation tracks for two new plant… Read more »

Streamlined Workflow for Identifying Candidate Functional Polymorphisms

         October 4, 2012

Since Dr. Ken Kaufman gave his webcast on Identifying Candidate Functional Polymorphisms in SVS, we’ve been working  with Dr. Kaufman to simplify and automate many of the steps in his workflow.  I touched on this in my last blog post, and I’m excited to report that with Ken’s help, we’ve been able to simplify the workflow even more. In particular… Read more »

Guest Post: Next Generation Variant Calling

         September 26, 2012

Editor’s Note by Gabe Rudy: I’ve had the chance to exchange thoughts, emails, and blog post comments for a while now with Jeff as he has written posts on NGS Leaders and engaged with me on 23andMe. He has also worked with Golden Helix software as part of Dr. Todd Lencz’s research efforts at Zucker Hillside Hospital until he recently… Read more »

Election Season: Which Exome Chip Wins?

         September 19, 2012

It has now been about a year since Illumina and Affymetrix announced their respective exome genotyping arrays.  Both products were launched with ambitious visions of how they would enable researchers to learn significantly more about the cause of human diseases. Sales of the Illumina chip exceeded expectations, and the company said that it sold enough exome chips through the first… Read more »

New Tools to Simplify the Workflow for Identifying Candidate Functional Polymorphisms in SVS

         September 5, 2012

Dr. Ken Kaufman’s extremely popular webinar inspired us to build new tools that would simplify the process of analyzing whole-exome DNA sequencing data even further.  First I’ll describe the tools showcased in the webcast.  Then I’ll detail the new tools we created to allow for a revised and simplified workflow. Subset Informative Genotypes by Category The Subset Informative Genotypes by… Read more »

Announcing Technical Support Bulletins

         July 20, 2012

Last month I was inspired to create a new way to keep our customers apprised of the latest information on Golden Helix software without cluttering inboxes and overwhelming our blog. I happened to receive a link to an article for one of Illumina’s bulletins and realized that was exactly what we needed at Golden Helix as well! On Wednesday, we… Read more »

New 1kG, dbNSFP, and ESP6500 Annotation Tracks and Associated Filters

         July 16, 2012

SVS 7.6.7 features new tools for filtering sequencing data based on functional predictions and allele frequencies. To complement these new features, new annotations tracks have been uploaded to our data server and are now available for our customers! Below you will find descriptions of the new tools and the related annotations track(s).

New Analysis and Spreadsheet Manipulation Tools in SVS!

         June 28, 2012

The script development team at Golden Helix has been hard at work these past few months and this means several new and exciting tools for our SVS customers!  The scripts featured in this blog post vary in function, from expanding the analytical options currently offered in SVS to transforming and editing spreadsheets.  As always, we invite you to visit our… Read more »

New Technical Support Bulletins (Forthcoming!), and a Known Bug with Filter Samples by Call Rate

         June 27, 2012

As Product Quality Manager, I have been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about the best way to communicate with our Golden Helix customers with regards to product quality and customer support issues. Most of our customers at this point have already seen several emails from me this year! Email is certainly one way to get an announcement… Read more »

Why You Should Care About Segmental Duplications

         June 6, 2012

My work in the GHI analytical services department gives me the opportunity to handle data from a variety of sources.  I have learned over time that every genotyping platform has its own personality.  Every time we get data from a new chip, I tend to learn something new about the quirks of genotyping technology.  I usually discover these quirks the… Read more »

How SVS Treats Gender in Calculating Genotype Statistics

         May 9, 2012

Recently several customers have asked how SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) treats gender when calculating genotype statistics. In this blog post, I will cover SVS’ current capabilities, what we have available through Python scripts, and what is coming in the near future. We thank all of our customers who have inquired about these capabilities and have given us valuable feedback… Read more »

New Features in SVS: Accounting for Sex Chromosomes and Filter Columns by Variant Type

         February 29, 2012

In the last couple of weeks, the SVS Script Repository has seen a handful of new additions.  This blog post highlights three new scripts, but as always, we welcome you to check out our repository regularly to enjoy the new and exciting functionality made possible by our Python integration in SVS! (To get these, or any other scripts, simply go… Read more »

Admixture and Blaine Bettinger

         January 25, 2012

Allow me to introduce you to Blaine Bettinger.  Blaine is a patent attorney who holds a PhD in Biochemistry with a concentration in genetics.  He is also a family history enthusiast who writes the Genetic Genealogist blog, where he gives commentary on applications of genomic science for advancing personal and family history research.  I first learned about Blaine last May… Read more »

New Plant/Animal Genomes and Annotation Tracks Now Available

         December 8, 2011

Recently we have expanded our annotation track offerings with new human variant frequency catalogs such as the 1000 Genomes Phase 1 Data. Of course, we also curate data for plant and animal genomes – some of which are currently available in our software and some of which will be available in our next release. In this blog post, I will… Read more »

Wondering what SVS can do for a PhD student? Just ask Sander.

         September 14, 2011

Sander van der Laan is like many Ph.D. students in the genomic analysis space. He has a lot of data and a lot of ideas about how to analyze it. His professor wants results. He’s the only one doing genetics (everyone else in his department is doing proteomics), so there’s always too much to do. And he finds command-line tools… Read more »

Marker Map Manipulation Improvements in SVS 7.5

         August 31, 2011

Manipulating a marker map in SVS has never been easier, thanks to expanded functionality in SVS 7.5.  Have you ever wanted to view annotation data next to marker map data?  Or expand the current marker map with spreadsheet data to create a custom map?  SVS 7.5 features two new functions that can accomplish these tasks. Adding Annotation Data to a… Read more »