WGS Extract WWW home
is a desktop tool for verifying, analyzing and manipulating your Personal 30x WGS test result. It can also be used with any human genome based BAM or CRAM file including WES test results.
WGS Extract User Manual: v4 Alpha (Google Doc)
Latest Releases you can install on the supported platforms are:
On the 15 Jan 2023, we discovered the 7 Dec 2022 v44 release of the program subpackage used in the Dev track introduced a bug that prevented microarray file generation from Build 38 BAMs / CRAMs. This is fixed in the v45 release (which may not yet be available in all tracks). We apologize for the inconvenience.
These are just the installer scripts. You need to download, unpack and run the installer for your OS. See the Installation Section in the v4 Alpha manual for more details about how to install on your platform. See the v4 Release Notes in the installation directory for more information about the updates in the current release. The initial program installation is just under 1GB but can grow in size as more reference libraries are loaded. This program size is miniscule compared to the 50+ GB BAM files it operates on.
As of the 31 July 2022 release, the WGS Extract program will now auto-update if you run the installer again. Not just updating the environment the tool depends on.
This tool is geared toward the needs of genetic genealogy and Ancient DNA (aDNA) studies but may be helpful for those looking into health-releated uses of WGS tests. The personal, sub-$500, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), 30x Whole Genome Sequence (WGS) tests are delivered with basic data files and reports. This tool serves to bridge the gap between the WGS data files delivered and the present day genetic genealogy community tools. Many health analysis sites accept the microarray and VCF files generated from your WGS test by this tool.
Still waiting for your WGS test results? Want to get started today? See the International Genome Sample Resource (1K Genome archive) for BAM or CRAM files that you can download and play with to learn the tool while waiting for your results.
This tool is designed to be a simple, push-button manipulation of WGS files from any source. It hides the installation and scripting of complex bioinformatic tools and automatically adapts based on the data within your files. For more control over your pipeline, either learn to use the underlying tools directly or seek out a Galaxy server (such as UseGalaxy).
Dante Labs, Nebula Genomics, Sequencing, and ySeq are test results most commonly used with this tool. Full Genomes Corp, GeneDX, Sano Genetics and Veritas (historical) are other test providers whose output is processed here. These are all results from Illumina or MGI next generation sequencers. Results from Oxford Nanopore and PacBio HiFi and Revio third generation sequencers can also be used; as can FamilyTreeDNA’s BigY output. (This is not an endorsement of any company or service; simply reporting what is commonly used with the tool.)
The tool acronym is WGSE and pronounced as “wig-see”. We encourage that use in conversation.
We use the Facebook group Consumer WGS Testing for discussions on how to make use of your personal, sub-$500, DTC 30x WGS test results. Bugs, use cases and announcements about the Beta release tool happen there. As part of that Facebook groups’ Files section, you will find a number of useful companion documents and tool references. In particular, start with Bioinformatics for Newbies.
User issues, if not brought up in the before-mentioned Facebook group, should be raised in the local user issues section of this GitHub site. The issues section is preferred so code bugs, use limitations and suggested improvements can be tracked within the development project.
There is a separate Facebook group for Developers and Alpha testers where bleeding edge issues are discussed and tested before wider availability. Developer’s should visit the main GitHub WGS Extract Developers Code Repository as well. Development issues, code bugs and limitations should be raised in the development issues section so they are tracked till resolved in a release. The manual contains many suggested improvements if you want to take a stab at modifying and improving the code. If the latest release is not checked in to GitHub, simply download the latest release and start from there. Look in the Program folder for the Python source files.
With v4, we have opened the following three release tracks to all: Beta, Alpha and Dev(eloper). Chose the installer for the track you wish to be on. Then simply rerun the installer when you are ready for an update to get the latest available release for that track. Developer releases are every few weeks and minimally tested. Alpha releases every one to few months and tested on each release platform with some key, new features not yet complete. Beta releases are every quarter to year and extensively regression tested and self consistent in their feature set.
If you want to change release tracks at anytime, simply edit the release.json file in the installation directory to change to the desired release track and then rerun the installer. Or overlay the new installer downloaded from above onto your existing installation. The only difference in each installer is the release.json file and its track setting inside. Your current, installed version is displayed at the top of the program when run.
We bring you v4 some 13 months after v3. v3 and the original, first 2 years v1 and v2 historical release from Marko are documented there. v3 went into Alpha on the 18th June 2020 and was finally released as Beta on the 15th June 2021. v4 entered Alpha on 1 April 2022 and has yet to be formally Beta released.
This page is located at https://WGSExtract.github.io/ and serves as the WWW home for the tool. As the need develops, we will create our own Facebook Group for users to raise issues outside of the local User Issues Section already mentioned.
64 bit OS and processor platforms tested as part of the release process are:
The tool has the potential to be a simple install in a BioConda environment as it is mostly just a Python package. But a majority of our users are on Microsoft Windows 10/11 systems. Bioconda nor the bioinformatic tools are supported there. So we currently deliver the tool with our own installer and Windows executables. This may change going forward after we find a Windows package manager to separately supply the bioinformatic tool ports we currently create. This is the only source of recent bioinformatic tool releases on a Windows system (that we are aware of). Docker packages are either not usable across all the platforms or too ineffecient for these large file and program needs. But could play a role in the future.
Some have downloaded the WGSE tool solely to gain access to the Win10 native executables of the Bioinformatic Tools that we make available. These are installed on Windows systems. You can use these Bioinformatic tools independently after installing the WGS Extract program on Windows. Look in the cygwin64/usr/local folder for all the bioinformatic tools. Just add cygwin/bin and cygwin/usr/local/bin to your PATH to make the programs available in the command line of CMD, Powershell or the native BASH there.
In v4, this is a full, BASE environment of Cygwin64 captured as of the stated release date. The bioinformatic tools are compiled to this same versions on that release date. So do not update the cygwin64 libraries direftly else the bioinformatic tools may break.
The CygWin64 tools natively compiled to a Windows platform can be slower than native Linux binaries on the same platform. The Windows WSLG environment with Ubuntu Linux using the Linux versions of the bioinformatic tools can be installed and used also. Once WSLG becomes more complete and supported in Windows 11, we will likely avoid delivering Windows executables all together and simply ask Windows users to install and use WSLG for running WGS Extract. At which time we can consider becoming a Bioconda package as well. We do not provide support for the use of WSGE on WSLG at this time. Recent changes in the WSL2 file system in the last year finally made WGSE possible and generally faster than the Cygwin64 native binaries. This occurs because the Windows kernel cannot support some fundamental features from Unix / Linux that the bioinformatic tools rely on (e.g. memory mapped files).
We started out hosting everything on a paid Google Drive account. What a disaster. Google starting lowering further and further the maximum size of a file that could be downloaded with a direct link. And then thwarted the attempts to get around that. Even with paid accounts, they clearly only want to support sharing of Google Docs files and maybe backup repositories that are shared between google accounts. Not public acess files not requiring registration. Luckily, we discovered MS OneDrive does not have these issues and restrictions. But are use of Bot.ly shortened links could not be used on MS Onedrive files (some legal spat between the companies). This was finally lifted sometime in early 2023 so we could completely transfer over to MS Onedrive and direct link downloads. Historical pages and releases will likely have non-functional Google Drive links which have to be rediscovered. We have taken release v1, v2 and v3 offline now.
SHA256: TBD
*WGSExtract-Alphav35_31Jul2022_installer.zip (may not be same version available above)
MD5: TBD
*WGSExtract-Alphav35_31Jul2022_installer.zip (may not be same version available above)
More information is available on using hashes to verify the download