The quickest and most flexible way to run Ensembl VEP on large scale variant sets is to install and run it locally. Depending on the use case, the underlying architecture, and the available permissions, installing VEP prerequisites is prone to complications. To aid with this, we have made the VEP available with containers.
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Cool stuff Ensembl VEP can do: disease information from DisGeNET
To better understand how your variants might be linked to disease, you can add information from DisGeNET to your VEP analysis. DisGeNET integrates data from expert curated repositories, GWAS catalogues, animal models and the scientific literature, to provide disease associations with genes and variants.
Continue readingCool stuff Ensembl VEP can do: links to variation databases
When you find a variant you are interested in, you will want to thoroughly investigate all current knowledge about it. For each Ensembl release we update our variation databases with the latest public information from a wide range of resources and make summary information available in VEP. We now make it easier to link to fuller details in these resources by providing lists of names used for each variant in each.
Continue readingCool stuff Ensembl VEP can do: one click BioMart
The web VEP tool gives you a lot of useful information about your variants, but you may want more details, for example about the genes your variants overlap: maybe you want to fetch their sequences, homologues or protein domains. With a single click, you can go straight to BioMart, using your list of genes or known variants as your filter.
Continue readingCool stuff Ensembl VEP can do – What’s in the cache and how does VEP use it?
We often get questions about Ensembl VEP caches – the compressed data files we create for each new Ensembl release, which can be automatically installed with the VEP installer script – so here’s a quick introduction to these handy data bundles.
Continue readingUpdate: Disruption to Ensembl services – tools are now restored
Due to problems at our Data Centre starting on Thursday 8th October, we experienced a period of reduced functionality affecting Ensembl tools, user accounts and archives.
Cool stuff the Ensembl VEP can do: getting and using allele frequency data
Allele frequency data is important for variant prioritisation – it helps to identify variants that are less likely to be causing a phenotype or disease. With the Ensembl VEP, you can get allele frequencies for variants that are identical with the variants you analysed and you can use allele frequencies to filter the results of your analysis.
Continue readingCool stuff the Ensembl VEP can do: annotating SARS-CoV-2 variants

We had a number of queries about the Ensembl VEP related to its support for SARS-CoV-2. Here, we talk about how you can use the command line VEP to analyse your variants against the SARS-CoV-2 gene set from Ensembl.
Continue readingCool stuff the Ensembl VEP can do: summarise your analysis
Ensembl VEP analyses your variant alleles in detail using a flexible choice of options, but it can also create simple summary tables and graphics describing your full variant set.
Continue readingCool stuff the Ensembl VEP can do: analysis with RefSeq transcripts

By default, VEP uses the Ensembl/GENCODE transcript set when analysing your variants, but you can also choose to use NCBI’s RefSeq transcripts.
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