FastQC

1. Introduction
1.1 What is FastQC
Modern high throughput sequencers can generate tens of millions of sequences in a
single run. Before analysing this sequence to draw biological conclusions you should
always perform some simple quality control checks to ensure that the raw data looks good
and there are no problems or biases in your data which may affect how you can usefully
use it.

Most sequencers will generate a QC report as part of their analysis pipeline, but this is
usually only focused on identifying problems which were generated by the sequencer
itself. FastQC aims to provide a QC report which can spot problems which originate either
in the sequencer or in the starting library material.

FastQC can be run in one of two modes. It can either run as a stand alone interactive
application for the immediate analysis of small numbers of FastQ files, or it can be run in a
non-interactive mode where it would be suitable for integrating into a larger analysis
pipeline for the systematic processing of large numbers of files.
2. Basic Operations
2.1 Opening a Sequence file
To open one or more Sequence files interactively simply run the program and select File >
Open. You can then select the files you want to analyse.

Newly opened files will immediately appear in the set of tabs at the top of the screen.
Because of the size of these files it can take a couple of minutes to open them. FastQC
operates a queueing system where only one file is opened at a time, and new files will
wait until existing files have been processed.

FastQC supports files in the following formats

 FastQ (all quality encoding variants)

 Casava FastQ files*
 Colorspace FastQ
 GZip compressed FastQ
 SAM
 BAM
 SAM/BAM Mapped only (normally used for colorspace data)

* Casava fastq format is the same as regular fastq except that the data is usually split
across multiple files for a single sample. In this mode the program will merge the files in a
sample group and present a single report for each sample. Also Casava fastq files contain
poor quality sequences which have been flagged to be remove. In Casava mode the
program will exclude these flagged sequences from the report.

By default FastQC will try to guess the file format from the name of the input file. Anything
ending in .sam or .bam will be opened as a SAM/BAM file (using all sequences, mapped
and unmapped) , and everything else will be treated as FastQ format. If you want to
override this detection and specify the file format manually then you can use the drop
down file filter in the file chooser to select the type of file you're going to load. You need to
use the drop down selector to make the program use the Mapped BAM or Casava file
modes as these won't be selected automatically.
2.2 Evaluating Results
The analysis in FastQC is performed by a series of analysis modules. The left hand side
of the main interactive display or the top of the HTML report show a summary of the
modules which were run, and a quick evaluation of whether the results of the module
seem entirely normal (green tick), slightly abnormal (orange triangle) or very unusual (red
cross).

It is important to stress that although the analysis results appear to give a pass/fail result,
these evaluations must be taken in the context of what you expect from your library. A
'normal' sample as far as FastQC is concerned is random and diverse. Some experiments
may be expected to produce libraries which are biased in particular ways. You should
treat the summary evaluations therefore as pointers to where you should concentrate your
attention and understand why your library may not look random and diverse.

Specific guidance on how to interpret the output of each module can be found in the
modules section of the help.

2.3 Saving a Report

In addition to providing an interactive report FastQC also has the option to create an
HTML version of this report for a more permanent record. This HTML report can also be
generated directly by running FastQC in non-interactive mode.

To create a report simply select File > Save Report from the main menu. By default a
report will be created using the name of the fastq file with _fastqc.zip appended to the
end. The report will be created for whichever file tab was active when the menu option
was selected.

The report file which is created is actually a zip file. When uncompressed this will create a
folder with the same name as the report file. Inside this will be a series of files, but the one
to look at is the fastqc_report.html file which links to the other files in the report.
3. Analysis Modules
3.1 Basic Statistics
Summary

The Basic Statistics module generates some simple composition statistics for the file
analysed.

 Filename: The original filename of the file which was analysed

 File type: Says whether the file appeared to contain actual base calls or colorspace
data which had to be converted to base calls
 Encoding: Says which ASCII encoding of quality values was found in this file.
 Total Sequences: A count of the total number of sequences processed. There are
two values reported, actual and estimated. At the moment these will always be the
same. In the future it may be possible to analyse just a subset of sequences and
estimate the total number, to speed up the analysis, but since we have found that
problematic sequences are not evenly distributed through a file we have disabled
this for now.
 Filtered Sequences: If running in Casava mode sequences flagged to be filtered will
be removed from all analyses. The number of such sequences removed will be
reported here. The total sequences count above will not include these filtered
sequences and will the number of sequences actually used for the rest of the
analysis.
 Sequence Length: Provides the length of the shortest and longest sequence in the
set. If all sequences are the same length only one value is reported.
 %GC: The overall %GC of all bases in all sequences

Warning

Basic Statistics never raises a warning.

Failure

Basic Statistics never raises an error.

3.2 Per Base Sequence Quality
Summary

This view shows an overview of the range of quality values across all bases at each
position in the FastQ file.

For each position a BoxWhisker type plot is drawn. The elements of the plot are as
follows:

 The central red line is the median value

 The yellow box represents the inter-quartile range (25-75%)
 The upper and lower whiskers represent the 10% and 90% points
 The blue line represents the mean quality

The y-axis on the graph shows the quality scores. The higher the score the better the
base call. The background of the graph divides the y axis into very good quality calls
(green), calls of reasonable quality (orange), and calls of poor quality (red). The quality of
calls on most platforms will degrade as the run progresses, so it is common to see base
calls falling into the orange area towards the end of a read.
It should be mentioned that there are number of different ways to encode a quality score
in a FastQ file. FastQC attempts to automatically determine which encoding method was
used, but in some very limited datasets it is possible that it will guess this incorrectly
(ironically only when your data is universally very good!). The title of the graph will
describe the encoding FastQC thinks your file used.

Warning

A warning will be issued if the lower quartile for any base is less than 10, or if the median
for any base is less than 25.

Failure

This module will raise a failure if the lower quartile for any base is less than 5 or if the
median for any base is less than 20.

3.3 Per Sequence Quality Scores

Summary

The per sequence quality score report allows you to see if a subset of your sequences
have universally low quality values. It is often the case that a subset of sequences will
have universally poor quality, often because they are poorly imaged (on the edge of the
field of view etc), however these should represent only a small percentage of the total
sequences.
If a significant proportion of the sequences in a run have overall low quality then this could
indicate some kind of systematic problem - possibly with just part of the run (for example
one end of a flowcell).

Warning

A warning is raised if the most frequently observed mean quality is below 27 - this equates
to a 0.2% error rate.

Failure

An error is raised if the most frequently observed mean quality is below 20 - this equates
to a 1% error rate.

3.4 Per Base Sequence Content

Summary

Per Base Sequence Content plots out the proportion of each base position in a file for
which each of the four normal DNA bases has been called.
In a random library you would expect that there would be little to no difference between
the different bases of a sequence run, so the lines in this plot should run parallel with each
other. The relative amount of each base should reflect the overall amount of these bases
in your genome, but in any case they should not be hugely imbalanced from each other.

If you see strong biases which change in different bases then this usually indicates an
overrepresented sequence which is contaminating your library. A bias which is consistent
across all bases either indicates that the original library was sequence biased, or that
there was a systematic problem during the sequencing of the library.

Warning

This module issues a warning if the difference between A and T, or G and C is greater
than 10% in any position.

Failure

This module will fail if the difference between A and T, or G and C is greater than 20% in
any position.

3.5 Per Base GC Content

Summary

Per Base GC Content plots out the GC content of each base position in a file.
In a random library you would expect that there would be little to no difference between
the different bases of a sequence run, so the line in this plot should run horizontally across
the graph. The overall GC content should reflect the GC content of the underlying
genome.

If you see a GC bias which changes in different bases then this could indicate an
overrepresented sequence which is contaminating your library. A bias which is consistent
across all bases either indicates that the original library was sequence biased, or that
there was a systematic problem during the sequencing of the library.

Warning

This module issues a warning it the GC content of any base strays more than 5% from the
mean GC content.

Failure

This module will fail if the GC content of any base strays more than 10% from the mean
GC content.

3.6 Per Sequence GC Content

Summary

This module measures the GC content across the whole length of each sequence in a file
and compares it to a modelled normal distribution of GC content.
In a normal random library you would expect to see a roughly normal distribution of GC
content where the central peak corresponds to the overall GC content of the underlying
genome. Since we don't know the the GC content of the genome the modal GC content is
calculated from the observed data and used to build a reference distribution.

An unusually shaped distribution could indicate a contaminated library or some other kinds
of biased subset. A normal distribution which is shifted indicates some systematic bias
which is independent of base position. If there is a systematic bias which creates a shifted
normal distribution then this won't be flagged as an error by the module since it doesn't
know what your genome's GC content should be.

Warning

A warning is raised if the sum of the deviations from the normal distribution represents
more than 15% of the reads.

Failure

This module will indicate a failure if the sum of the deviations from the normal distribution
represents more than 30% of the reads.

3.7 Per Base N Content

Summary

If a sequencer is unable to make a base call with sufficient confidence then it will normally
substitute an N rather than a conventional base] call

This module plots out the percentage of base calls at each position for which an N was
called.

It's not unusual to see a very low proportion of Ns appearing in a sequence, especially
nearer the end of a sequence. However, if this proportion rises above a few percent it
suggests that the analysis pipeline was unable to interpret the data well enough to make
valid base calls.

Warning

This module raises a warning if any position shows an N content of >5%.

Failure

This module will raise an error if any position shows an N content of >20%.

3.8 Sequence Length Distribution

Summary

Some high throughput sequencers generate sequence fragments of uniform length, but
others can contain reads of wildly varying lengths. Even within uniform length libraries
some pipelines will trim sequences to remove poor quality base calls from the end.

This module generates a graph showing the distribution of fragment sizes in the file which
was analysed.

In many cases this will produce a simple graph showing a peak only at one size, but for
variable length FastQ files this will show the relative amounts of each different size of
sequence fragment.

Warning

This module will raise a warning if all sequences are not the same length.

Failure

This module will raise an error if any of the sequences have zero length.
3.9 Duplicate Sequences
Summary

In a diverse library most sequences will occur only once in the final set. A low level of
duplication may indicate a very high level of coverage of the target sequence, but a high
level of duplication is more likely to indicate some kind of enrichment bias (eg PCR over
amplification).

This module counts the degree of duplication for every sequence in the set and creates a
plot showing the relative number of sequences with different degrees of duplication.

To cut down on the memory requirements for this module only sequences which occur in
the first 200,000 sequences in each file are analysed, but this should be enough to get a
good impression for the duplication levels in the whole file. Each sequence is tracked to
the end of the file to give a representative count of the overall duplication level. To cut
down on the amount of information in the final plot any sequences with more than 10
duplicates are placed into the 10 duplicates category - so it's not unusual to see a small
rise in this final category. If you see a big rise in this final category then it means you have
a large number of sequences with very high levels of duplication.
Because the duplication detection requires an exact sequence match over the whole
length of the sequence any reads over 75bp in length are truncated to 50bp for the
purposes of this analysis. Even so, longer reads are more likely to contain sequencing
errors which will artificially increase the observed diversity and will tend to underrepresent
highly duplicated sequences.

Warning

This module will issue a warning if non-unique sequences make up more than 20% of the
total.

Failure

This module will issue a error if non-unique sequences make up more than 50% of the
total.

3.10 Overrepresented Sequences

Summary

A normal high-throughput library will contain a diverse set of sequences, with no individual
sequence making up a tiny fraction of the whole. Finding that a single sequence is very
overrepresented in the set either means that it is highly biologically significant, or indicates
that the library is contaminated, or not as diverse as you expected.

This module lists all of the sequence which make up more than 0.1% of the total. To
conserve memory only sequences which appear in the first 200,000 sequences are
tracked to the end of the file. It is therefore possible that a sequence which is
overrepresented but doesn't appear at the start of the file for some reason could be
missed by this module.

For each overrepresented sequence the program will look for matches in a database of
common contaminants and will report the best hit it finds. Hits must be at least 20bp in
length and have no more than 1 mismatch. Finding a hit doesn't necessarily mean that this
is the source of the contamination, but may point you in the right direction. It's also worth
pointing out that many adapter sequences are very similar to each other so you may get a
hit reported which isn't technically correct, but which has very similar sequence to the
actual match.

Because the duplication detection requires an exact sequence match over the whole
length of the sequence any reads over 75bp in length are truncated to 50bp for the
purposes of this analysis. Even so, longer reads are more likely to contain sequencing
errors which will artificially increase the observed diversity and will tend to underrepresent
highly duplicated sequences.
Warning

This module will issue a warning if any sequence is found to represent more than 0.1% of
the total.

Failure

This module will issue an error if any sequence is found to represent more than 1% of the
total.

3.11 Overrepresented Kmers

Summary

The analysis of overrepresented sequences will spot an increase in any exactly duplicated
sequences, but there are a different subset of problems where it will not work.

 If you have very long sequences with poor sequence quality then random
sequencing errors will dramatically reduce the counts for exactly duplicated
sequences.
 If you have a partial sequence which is appearing at a variety of places within your
sequence then this won't be seen either by the per base content plot or the duplicate
sequence analysis.

This module counts the enrichment of every 5-mer within the sequence library. It
calculates an expected level at which this k-mer should have been seen based on the
base content of the library as a whole and then uses the actual count to calculate an
observed/expected ratio for that k-mer. In addition to reporting a list of hits it will draw a
graph for the top 6 hits to show the pattern of enrichment of that Kmer across the length of
your reads. This will show if you have a general enrichment, or if there is a pattern of bias
at different points over your read length.
Any k-mer showing more than a 3 fold overall enrichment or a 5 fold enrichment at any
given base position will be reported by this module.

To allow this module to run in a reasonable time only 20% of the whole library is analysed
and the results are extrapolated to the rest of the library.

Warning

This module will issue a warning if any k-mer is enriched more than 3 fold overall, or more
than 5 fold at any individual position.

Failure

This module will issue a error if any k-mer is enriched more than 10 fold at any individual
base position.