Genome Analysis Toolkit

Variant Discovery in High-Throughput Sequencing Data

GATK process banner

Need Help?

Search our documentation

Community Forum

Hi, How can we help?

Developed in the Data Sciences Platform at the Broad Institute, the toolkit offers a wide variety of tools with a primary focus on variant discovery and genotyping. Its powerful processing engine and high-performance computing features make it capable of taking on projects of any size. Learn more

VariantAnnotator returns NullPointerException

0

6 comments

  • Avatar
    Genevieve Brandt (she/her)

    Hello, for posts regarding GATK issues, we require three items to be included in the post.

    1. GATK version number

    2. Complete Stack Trace/Error log

    3. Exact command used

    Your post is missing one of these items. Please include all three so that we can thoroughly look into the problem. 

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avatar
    Wout Megchelenbrink

    Hi Genevieve, I see the problem, I indeed omitted the INFO fields. Sorry, let me retry from scratch:

     

    GATK version used:

    4.1.9.0 (also in 4.1.8.1)

    Exact command used:

    gatk VariantAnnotator -V s220_AETO_cr_filtered.vcf.gz -I Exomeseq_s85_CR_q20_srt_mdup_RG_BSQR.bam --output s3817_VA.vcf -A DepthPerAlleleBySample

    Complete stack trace

    Using GATK jar /hpc/pmc_stunnenberg/wout/software/gatk-4.1.9.0/gatk-package-4.1.9.0-local.jar
    Running:
    java -Dsamjdk.use_async_io_read_samtools=false -Dsamjdk.use_async_io_write_samtools=true -Dsamjdk.use_async_io_write_tribble=false -Dsamjdk.compression_level=2 -jar /hpc/pmc_stunnenberg/wout/software/gatk-4.1.9.0/gatk-package-4.1.9.0-local.jar VariantAnnotator -V s220_AETO_cr_filtered.vcf.gz -I Exomeseq_s85_CR_q20_srt_mdup_RG_BSQR.bam --output s3817_VA.vcf -A DepthPerAlleleBySample
    12:10:34.658 INFO NativeLibraryLoader - Loading libgkl_compression.so from jar:file:/hpc/pmc_stunnenberg/wout/software/gatk-4.1.9.0/gatk-package-4.1.9.0-local.jar!/com/intel/gkl/native/libgkl_compression.so
    Oct 22, 2020 12:10:36 PM shaded.cloud_nio.com.google.auth.oauth2.ComputeEngineCredentials runningOnComputeEngine
    INFO: Failed to detect whether we are running on Google Compute Engine.
    12:10:36.219 INFO VariantAnnotator - ------------------------------------------------------------
    12:10:36.220 INFO VariantAnnotator - The Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) v4.1.9.0
    12:10:36.220 INFO VariantAnnotator - For support and documentation go to https://software.broadinstitute.org/gatk/
    12:10:36.221 INFO VariantAnnotator - Executing as wmegchelenbrink@hpcs04.op.umcutrecht.nl on Linux v3.10.0-1062.4.3.el7.x86_64 amd64
    12:10:36.221 INFO VariantAnnotator - Java runtime: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM v11.0.8-internal+0-adhoc..src
    12:10:36.221 INFO VariantAnnotator - Start Date/Time: October 22, 2020 at 12:10:34 PM CEST
    12:10:36.221 INFO VariantAnnotator - ------------------------------------------------------------
    12:10:36.221 INFO VariantAnnotator - ------------------------------------------------------------
    12:10:36.222 INFO VariantAnnotator - HTSJDK Version: 2.23.0
    12:10:36.222 INFO VariantAnnotator - Picard Version: 2.23.3
    12:10:36.222 INFO VariantAnnotator - HTSJDK Defaults.COMPRESSION_LEVEL : 2
    12:10:36.222 INFO VariantAnnotator - HTSJDK Defaults.USE_ASYNC_IO_READ_FOR_SAMTOOLS : false
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - HTSJDK Defaults.USE_ASYNC_IO_WRITE_FOR_SAMTOOLS : true
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - HTSJDK Defaults.USE_ASYNC_IO_WRITE_FOR_TRIBBLE : false
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - Deflater: IntelDeflater
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - Inflater: IntelInflater
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - GCS max retries/reopens: 20
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - Requester pays: disabled
    12:10:36.223 INFO VariantAnnotator - Initializing engine
    12:10:36.551 INFO FeatureManager - Using codec VCFCodec to read file file:///hpc/pmc_stunnenberg/wout/projects/yanan_celseq2/WES/bam/s220_AETO_cr_filtered.vcf.gz
    12:10:37.089 INFO VariantAnnotator - Done initializing engine
    12:10:37.188 INFO ProgressMeter - Starting traversal
    12:10:37.188 INFO ProgressMeter - Current Locus Elapsed Minutes Variants Processed Variants/Minute
    12:10:37.498 INFO VariantAnnotator - Shutting down engine
    [October 22, 2020 at 12:10:37 PM CEST] org.broadinstitute.hellbender.tools.walkers.annotator.VariantAnnotator done. Elapsed time: 0.05 minutes.
    Runtime.totalMemory()=1621884928
    java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.tools.walkers.haplotypecaller.AssemblyBasedCallerUtils.splitReadsBySample(AssemblyBasedCallerUtils.java:162)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.tools.walkers.annotator.VariantAnnotator.makeLikelihoods(VariantAnnotator.java:244)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.tools.walkers.annotator.VariantAnnotator.apply(VariantAnnotator.java:234)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.engine.VariantWalker.lambda$traverse$0(VariantWalker.java:104)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:183)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:195)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$2$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:177)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:195)
    at java.base/java.util.Iterator.forEachRemaining(Iterator.java:133)
    at java.base/java.util.Spliterators$IteratorSpliterator.forEachRemaining(Spliterators.java:1801)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:484)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:474)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:150)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:173)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.evaluate(AbstractPipeline.java:234)
    at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline.forEach(ReferencePipeline.java:497)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.engine.VariantWalker.traverse(VariantWalker.java:102)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.engine.GATKTool.doWork(GATKTool.java:1049)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.cmdline.CommandLineProgram.runTool(CommandLineProgram.java:140)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.cmdline.CommandLineProgram.instanceMainPostParseArgs(CommandLineProgram.java:192)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.cmdline.CommandLineProgram.instanceMain(CommandLineProgram.java:211)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.Main.runCommandLineProgram(Main.java:160)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.Main.mainEntry(Main.java:203)
    at org.broadinstitute.hellbender.Main.main(Main.java:289)

     

    Best regards,

    Wout

     

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avatar
    Genevieve Brandt (she/her)

    Hi Wout Megchelenbrink, thanks so much for providing that.

    Does your BAM header contain the proper read group & sample information? Here is more info about what GATK requires in a BAM file: https://gatk.broadinstitute.org/hc/en-us/articles/360035890791-SAM-or-BAM-or-CRAM-Mapped-sequence-data-formats

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avatar
    Wout Megchelenbrink

    Hi Genevieve, 

    The BAM files were fine, I ran the "somatic variant calling best practice" , including the AddOrReplaceReadGroups function with them. As i feared, most of the problem was caused by an entity between my chair and the screen ;-)

    In brief, I was testing the VariantAnnotation tool on a VCF for which the sample names were not in the BAM file. What probably happens is that the tool searches reads that correspond to each of the samples in the VCF file. In this case, the BAM file and the VCF had no samples in common. This probably led to the NULL pointer exception in the SplitSamples function, which likely received no samples at all.

    Adding a simple validation with a more meaningful error description would probably be helpful to others in the future. For me the problem is solved.

    Best,
    Wout 

    PS: I do have a question about the VariantAnnotator, but it is not releated to this error, so I will add a new post for that.

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avatar
    Genevieve Brandt (she/her)

    Hi Wout Megchelenbrink, glad that you found the issue, and thank you for posting your solution so that it is useful for other GATK users!

    I have created an issue request on the GATK github page to improve the error message, you can track the progress here

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Avatar
    Genevieve Brandt (she/her)

    Wout Megchelenbrink just wanted to update you that the GATK Team has fixed this issue with the error message and the change will be in the next update of GATK.

    0
    Comment actions Permalink

Post is closed for comments.

Powered by Zendesk