Using MultiQC to produce consolidated QC Reports
Byte Club, October 18 2017
Anna Battenhouse, CSSB & CCBB.
Overview
- MultiQC is a tool for aggregating NGS QC reports.
- It does not produce reports, just combines them for unified visualization.
- MultiQC "knows" the report formats of many existing NGS tools:
- FastQC, cutadapt, bowtie2, tophat, STAR, kallisto, HISAT2, samtools, featureCounts, HTSeq, MACS2, Picard, GATK
- … and more!
- MultiQC can also be configured to display other data via two straightforward steps:
- format the data appropriately (e.g. tab-delimited text files)
- create appropriate custom data entries in a multiqc_config.yaml configuration file
- MultiQC produces neat, interactive plots in an HTML file.
- So it can be used as a basic plotting tool for many kinds of reports and data, not just those produced by NGS tools!
I recommend using Chrome to view MultiQC reports.
The HTML reports generated by MultQC rely heavily on JavaScript and other dynamic web content scripting tools, and not all browsers support them equally well.
Code Workshop
ATAC-seq is a transposon-insertion sequencing method where an engineered, activate transposon inserts in accessible ("open") chromatin. It is considered to be a much simpler protocol to standard DNase-seq, and requires less starting material as well.
For data, we will use some ATAC-seq datasets produced in Igor Ponomarev's lab in WCAAR. As a proof-of-concept for future work, they performed the ATAC-seq protocol on 5k and 50k cell nuclei from mouse brain, producing 2 paired-end datasets.
Setup to follow along
Login to ls5 or stampede at TACCTACC. Execute commands to set up access to the multiqc binary:
module load python export PATH="/work/projects/BioITeam/ls5/bin/multiqc-1.0:$PATH" export PYTHONPATH="/work/projects/BioITeam/ls5/lib/python2.7/annab-packages:$PYTHONPATH" # make sure it is working... multiqc --help
module load python export PATH="/work/projects/BioITeam/stampede/bin/multiqc-1.0:$PATH" export PYTHONPATH="/work/projects/BioITeam/stampede/lib/python2.7/annab-packages:$PYTHONPATH" # make sure it is working... multiqc --help
Produce a consolidated FastQC report
The FastQC took is great for producing detailed reports for every individual fastq file. For example, for Igor's 2 PE datasets, 4 reports are produced from running fastqc (http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/igor/fastqc/).
The shortcoming is that you have to browse through all the individual reports one at a time, which can be tedious for large experiments.
This is where MultiQC's power comes in. You can point MultiQC to a directory where FastQC has been run and it will magically produce a consolidated report.
For example, logged in to ls5 at TACC, first stage a directory where FastQC has been run:
mkdir -p $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc ln -s -f /work/projects/BioITeam/projects/byteclub/multiqc/fastqc
Now this is all it takes to produce a basic MultiQC report:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc multiqc .
When this completes you'll see a new file and directory:
- multiqc_report.html – the MultiQC HTML report with its default name
- multiqc_data – directory with text files containing MultiQC data used in the report as well as a log file
Here's what this basic FastQC report looks like: http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/byteclub/multiqc/01_basic.multiqc_report.html
Add a few customizations
MultiQC reports can be customized by creating a file called multiqc_config.yaml in the directory where you call multiqc.
Use your favorite text editor to create a a file called multiqc_config.yaml in your $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc directory as shown below. This will add report title lines and change the names of the MultiQC output files.
# Titles to use for the report.
title: "ATAC-Seq QC Reports"
subtitle: null
intro_text: "MultiQC reports for Igor's ATAC-Seq proof-of-concept project."
report_header_info:
- Sequenced by: 'GSAF'
- Job: 'JA17277'
- Run: 'SA17121'
- Setup: '2x150'
# Change the output filenames
output_fn_name: mqc_report.html
data_dir_name: mqc_report_data
After saving this file, remove the previous MultiQC outputs and re-run the program:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc rm -rf multiqc_data multiqc_report.html multiqc .
If all went well, you should now see a mqc_report.html file and a mqc_report_data directory. Your newly-generated mqc_report.html report file in should look like this (note the new title and header): http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/byteclub/multiqc/02_custom.mqc_report.html.
Tips for working with the MultiQC configuation file
Here are a few tips for working with the MultiQC configuration file.
- Always use spaces (not tabs!) in the multiqc_config.yaml file.
- Make sure the file is saved with Unix line endings (not Windows or Mac).
- Pay attention to the output when running multiqc. It will tell you if there are issues parsing the config file.
- Always delete any previous MultiQC output files before running multiqc
- While their documentation says existing files will just be updated, I have seen MultiQC get confused when previous reports exist.
- It is a good idea to change the name of the MultiQC output files
- If output files with those names are not created, something went wrong!
- Consult example config files
- An example multiqc_config.yaml file: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC/blob/master/multiqc_config_example.yaml
- All multiqc_config.yaml defaults: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC/blob/master/multiqc/utils/config_defaults.yaml
- Avoid running multiqc on large complex directory trees.
- Instead, create a separate directory (or directory tree) only for MultiQC
- Copy or link the files you want MultiQC to look for there, and use it as MultiQC's target directory.
- MultiQC will run much faster and have fewer confusions.
- Instead, create a separate directory (or directory tree) only for MultiQC
Add reports from a bowtie2 alignment
First stage some mm10 bowtie2 alignment data:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc rsync -avrP /work/projects/BioITeam/projects/byteclub/multiqc/bowtie2/ bowtie2/
Take a look at the contents of the bowtie2 directory. It contains typical output files from running Anna's align_bowtie2_illumina.sh alignment script.
MultiQC will look at all files in this directory looking for report formats it understands. Here, reports that MultiQC will recognize as-is include:
- <prefix>.flagstat.txt - output from running samtools flagstat
- <prefix>.idxstats.txt - output from running samtools idxstats
- <prefix>.dupinfo.txt - output from running Picard MarkDuplicates
Now run multiqc again:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc rm -rf mqc_report* multiqc .
If all went well, you should now see a mqc_report.html file that looks like this: http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/byteclub/multiqc/03_bowtie.mqc_report.html, with new sections for Picard and Samtools reports.
Fix the Picard MarkDuplicates sample name
Notice there is something odd going on in the new General Statistics section. We see M Reads Mapped entries for samples called brain_50k_nuclei and brain_5k_nuclei, but % Dups entries for samples named brain_50k_nuclei.sort and brain_5k_nuclei.sort.
To see where a General Statistics column comes from, hover over the column header. Doing this tells us that the the M Reads Mapped figures came from the samtools flagstat report, while the % Dups comes from Picard MarkDuplicates.
Take a look at one of the <prefix>.dupinfo.txt files to see what might be going on. Below I've added line breaks to the command line info for clarity.
## htsjdk.samtools.metrics.StringHeader # picard.sam.markduplicates.MarkDuplicates INPUT=[brain_5k_nuclei.sort.bam] OUTPUT=brain_5k_nuclei.sort.dup.bam METRICS_FILE=brain_5k_nuclei.dupinfo.txt ASSUME_SORTED=true VALIDATION_STRINGENCY=LENIENT MAX_SEQUENCES_FOR_DISK_READ_ENDS_MAP=50000 MAX_FILE_HANDLES_FOR_READ_ENDS_MAP=8000 SORTING_COLLECTION_SIZE_RATIO=0.25 TAG_DUPLICATE_SET_MEMBERS=false REMOVE_SEQUENCING_DUPLICATES=false TAGGING_POLICY=DontTag REMOVE_DUPLICATES=false DUPLICATE_SCORING_STRATEGY=SUM_OF_BASE_QUALITIES PROGRAM_RECORD_ID=MarkDuplicates PROGRAM_GROUP_NAME=MarkDuplicates READ_NAME_REGEX=<optimized capture of last three ':' separated fields as numeric values> OPTICAL_DUPLICATE_PIXEL_DISTANCE=100 VERBOSITY=INFO QUIET=false COMPRESSION_LEVEL=5 MAX_RECORDS_IN_RAM=500000 CREATE_INDEX=false CREATE_MD5_FILE=false GA4GH_CLIENT_SECRETS=client_secrets.json ## htsjdk.samtools.metrics.StringHeader # Started on: Wed Jul 05 23:20:57 CDT 2017 ## METRICS CLASS picard.sam.DuplicationMetrics LIBRARY UNPAIRED_READS_EXAMINED READ_PAIRS_EXAMINED SECONDARY_OR_SUPPLEMENTARY_RDS UNMAPPED_READS UNPAIRED_READ_DUPLICATES READ_PAIR_DUPLICATES READ_PAIR_OPTICAL_DUPLICATES PERCENT_DUPLICATION ESTIMATED_LIBRARY_SIZE brain_5k_nuclei 0 28666117 0 16562322 0 12504025 902024 0.436 195 23118972 ## HISTOGRAM java.lang.Double BIN VALUE 1.0 1.016471 ...
This is a standard metrics file produced by running Picard MarkDuplicates with a METRICS_FILE option specified. Note the INPUT bam filename: brain_5k_nuclei.sort.bam. MultiQC parses this report looking for the INPUT file, and uses it (minus the .bam suffix) as the sample name. So brain_5k_nuclei.sort.bam becomes sample name brain_5k_nuclei.sort.
The solution is to modify the metrics so that it has brain_5k_nuclei.bam as its INPUT option. This sounds straightforward but there are a couple of gocha's.
- We don't want to modify the original metrics file, as it is a faithful record of what was executed. So we want to make a copy of the metrics file with the modified INPUT parameter.
- We want MultiQC to ignore the original metrics file, and only use our "fixed" metrics log.
- But MultiQC will, by default, look at all reports in the specified analysis directory (and its sub-directories), and will then find two metrics reports.
For the first part of the solution, we'll create a modified version of the metrics files, but not in the alignment directory, but in a new for_multiqc directory.
mkdir -p $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc/for_multiqc
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc/for_multiqc
for f in ../bowtie2/*.dupinfo.txt; do
bn=`basename $f`
pfx=${bn%%.dupinfo.txt}
echo "$f - $pfx"
cat $f | sed 's/[.]sort//g' > ${pfx}.dupmetrics.txt
done
Your $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc/02_bowtie/for_multiqc directory should have 2 files:
- brain_50k_nuclei.dupmetrics.txt
- brain_50k_nuclei.dupmetrics.txt
The final piece of the puzzle is to tell MultiQC to ignore the original <prefix>.dupinfo.txt files by modifying the multiqc_config.yaml file, adding a fn_ignore_files list entry.
# Titles to use for the report.
title: "ATAC-Seq QC Reports"
subtitle: null
intro_text: "MultiQC reports for Igor's ATAC-Seq proof-of-concept project."
report_header_info:
- Sequenced by: 'GSAF'
- Job: 'JA17277'
- Run: 'SA17121'
- Setup: '2x150'
# Change the output filenames
output_fn_name: mqc_report.html
data_dir_name: mqc_report_data
# Ignore these files / directories / paths when searching for reports
fn_ignore_files:
- '*.dupinfo.txt'
After making this config file modification, you can now run multiqc again:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc; rm -rf mqc_report*; multiqc .
The resulting report should look like this: , with a cleaned up General Statistics table.
Controlling report section order
You may have noticed that MultiQC lists its report sections in fairly random order. If you're Type-A like me, you'll want sections ordered to reflect the sequence of analyses performed. This can be controlled by adding a list of top_module entries.
# Titles to use for the report.
title: "ATAC-Seq QC Reports"
subtitle: null
intro_text: "MultiQC reports for Igor's ATAC-Seq proof-of-concept project."
report_header_info:
- Sequenced by: 'GSAF'
- Job: 'JA17277'
- Run: 'SA17121'
- Setup: '2x150'
# Change the output filenames
output_fn_name: mqc_report.html
data_dir_name: mqc_report_data
# Ignore these files / directories / paths when searching for reports
fn_ignore_files:
- '*.dupinfo.txt'
# Modules that should come at the top of the report
top_modules:
- 'generalstats'
- 'fastqc'
- 'samtools'
- 'picard'
After making this config file modification, you can now run multiqc again:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc; rm -rf mqc_report*; multiqc .
Producing a report like this: http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/byteclub/multiqc/05_section_order.mqc_report.html, with a section order that more closely follows workflow processing steps.
About MultiQC custom data
When MultiQC does not know about data produced by a program it doesn't know about, it has a mechanisms for adding custom report sections. The simple way to do this is declaratively, (i.e., via configuation parameters) as described below. (You can also write a Python module for very fine-grained control, but that is a lot more work.)
To add a section for custom data:
- Format the data appropriately
- MultiQC supports a number of data file formats (yaml, comma-separated values, etc.)
- I recommend using simple tab-delimited text files, with MultiQC's preferred .tsv extension.
- data can be provided as one file per sample (where the sample name is part of the file name)
- or as a single table-like file containing data for all samples
- MultiQC supports a number of data file formats (yaml, comma-separated values, etc.)
- Add two required custom data section entries in the multiqc_config.yaml configuration file
- a sp (search path) section for finding report data
- specifying a wildcard pattern, if data is supplied as one file per sample
- or a single file name for a consolidated data file
- each report has a user-named section under a single custom_data section.
- the required id attribute must be unique, and ties the custom_data, sp and custom_content sections
- other important attributes include description, file_format, and plot_type.
- a pconfig sub-section contains plot configuration options
- a sp (search path) section for finding report data
- Specify the ordering of the custom report section (optional)
- add a custom_content section order list entry
See http://multiqc.info/docs/#configuration for more details about the structure of custom data sections in multiqc_config.yaml.
MultiQC supports these custom plot types:
- bargraph
- linegraph
- scatter
- table
- generalstats
- beeswarm
- heatmap
Plot-type-specific plotting options can be specified in each custom data report's pconfig section. See http://multiqc.info/docs/#plotting-functions for more information. While this section is written for Python programming, the options listed in each plot type's "config" block can be used in the plot's plot's pconfig section (modulo the Python versus YAML formatting differences).
Adding a custom linegraph
Here we'll create a linegraph report of insert sizes for the bowtie2 alignments.
We start with the <prefix>.insertsz.txt files produced by Anna's align_bowtie2_illumina.sh script. That file has both positive and "negative" insert sizes with read counts for all mates, proper pairs, and R1s and R2s individually. For a data file compatible with MultiQC's linegraph, we want only two columns: the positive insert size and count of proper pairs with that size (negative sizes are redundant since each proper pair will have one positive and one negative size entry of the same magnitude).
So a bit of command line reformatting is needed to produce files for MultiQC, which we will save in our for_multiqc directory.
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc/for_multiqc
for f in ../bowtie2/*.insertsz.txt; do
bn=`basename $f`
pfx=${bn%%.insertsz.txt}
echo "$f - $pfx"
tail -n +2 $f | grep -v -P '^-' | cut -f 1,3 > ${pfx}.bowtie2_isizes.tsv
done
Next we edit the multiqc_config.yaml configuration file to add appropriate custom data sections:
x
Then the usual...
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc; rm -rf mqc_report*; multiqc .
Resulting in a report that includes our inset size distribution data the custom data section we configured: http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/byteclub/multiqc/06_custom_linegraph.mqc_report.html, with a new section called Bowtie2 insert size.
What's cool is that this "sawtooth" insert size distribution occurs because of the way transposons insert into the major groove of DNA at regular intervals. So this graph shows Igor that his ATAC-seq proof-of-concept experiment worked!
Adding a custom bargraph
Here we'll create two custom bargraph reports, one for bowtie2 mapping qualities and a second showing genome coverage of the alignments.
The data files for both reports are pretty simple, but it took a bit of scripting to create them. So let's just use pre-made copies:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc cp /work/projects/BioITeam/projects/byteclub/multiqc/07_custom_bargraph/for_multiqc/*mapq* for_multiqc/ cp /work/projects/BioITeam/projects/byteclub/multiqc/07_custom_bargraph/for_multiqc/*genomecov* for_multiqc/
There is one mapping quality histogram for each dataset, with category names in the 1st column and counts in the 2nd. The 50k dataset file looks like this:
q0 137354 1-9 671546 10-19 1081868 20-29 1945926 30-39 1508496 40+ 12930272
There is just one data file for genome coverage. Unlike the per-sample files, it has a header, with an arbitrary tag for the categories in the 1st column, then dataset names and their counts in subsequent columns. (I've re-formatted the data for readability, but remember that all .tsv file data must be tab-separated.)
count 5k_nuclei 50k_nuclei (a) none 2140984435 2175228345 (b) 1-2 237947623 351105871 (c) 3-10 308665107 186361275 (d) 11-50 38729079 17356704 (e) 51+ 4545530 819579
Here we edit the multiqc_config.yaml configuration file to add appropriate custom data sections:
# Titles to use for the report.
title: "ATAC-Seq QC Reports"
subtitle: null
intro_text: "MultiQC reports for Igor's ATAC-Seq proof-of-concept project."
report_header_info:
- Sequenced by: 'GSAF'
- Job: 'JA17277'
- Run: 'SA17121'
- Setup: '2x150'
# Change the output filenames
output_fn_name: mqc_report.html
data_dir_name: mqc_report_data
# Ignore these files / directories / paths when searching for reports
fn_ignore_files:
- '*.dupinfo.txt'
# Modules that should come at the top of the report
top_modules:
- 'generalstats'
- 'fastqc'
- 'samtools'
- 'picard'
# --------------------------------
# Custom data
# --------------------------------
custom_content:
order:
- bowtie2_isize_section
- bowtie2_mapq_section
- genome_coverage_section
custom_data:
bowtie2_isize:
id: 'bowtie2_isize_section'
section_name: 'Bowtie2 insert size'
description: 'distribution for alignments (bowtie2 --local -X2000 --no-mixed --no-discordant)'
file_format: 'tsv'
plot_type: 'linegraph'
pconfig:
id: 'bowtie2_isize_plot'
title: 'Insert sizes for proper pairs'
xlab: 'Insert size'
ylab: 'Count'
bowtie2_mapq:
id: 'bowtie2_mapq_section'
section_name: 'Mapping quality'
description: 'distribution for aligned reads before filtering'
file_format: 'tsv'
plot_type: 'bargraph'
pconfig:
id: 'bowtie2_mapq_plot'
title: 'Mapping quality scores'
ymax: 60000000
genome_coverage:
id: 'genome_coverage_section'
section_name: 'Genome coverage'
description: 'of mapped inserts (bedtools genomecov -fs), grouped into coverage count catgories'
file_format: 'tsv'
plot_type: 'bargraph'
pconfig:
id: 'genome_coverage_plot'
title: 'Position coverage by coverage count category'
logswitch: True
stacking: null
sp:
bowtie2_isize_section:
fn: '*.bowtie2_isizes.tsv'
bowtie2_mapq_section:
fn: '*.mapq_histogram.tsv'
genome_coverage_section:
fn: 'combined_genomecov.tsv'
# file suffixes to remove when generating sample names...
extra_fn_clean_exts:
- type: 'replace'
pattern: '.mapq_histogram.tsv'
- type: 'replace'
pattern: '.genomecov.tsv'
Then the usual...
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc; rm -rf mqc_report*; multiqc .
Resulting in a report that includes our new Mapping quality and Genome coverage sections, that should look like this: http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/byteclub/multiqc/07_custom_bargraph.mqc_report.html.
Making MultiQC run faster and be less confused
By default, MultiQC scans all files in the analysis directory you specify. This can take quite a while for complex directory hierarchies with many files that will not be used by MultiQC.
Additionally, MultiQC can get confused when the same (or similar) data is found in different files, or in different directories.
To address these issues, it is a good practice to copy everything you want MultiQC to process into a single directory, then either specify just that directory on the multiqc command line (e.g. multiqc for_multiqc), or exclude other directories in the multiqc_config.yaml file.
For example, here we can stage all the reports we want MultiQC to process in our for_multiqc directory:
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc/for_fastqc ln -s -f ../fastqc cp -p ../bowtie2/*.flagstat.txt . cp -p ../bowtie2/*.idxstats.txt .
Your for_multiqc directory should now everything we want MultiQC to use:
brain_50k_nuclei.bowtie2_isizes.tsv brain_50k_nuclei.dupmetrics.txt brain_50k_nuclei.flagstat.txt brain_50k_nuclei.idxstats.txt brain_50k_nuclei.mapq_histogram.tsv brain_5k_nuclei.bowtie2_isizes.tsv brain_5k_nuclei.dupmetrics.txt brain_5k_nuclei.flagstat.txt brain_5k_nuclei.idxstats.txt brain_5k_nuclei.mapq_histogram.tsv combined_genomecov.tsv fastqc
Run MultiQC again, but this time just point it
cd $SCRATCH/byteclub/multiqc rm -rf mqc_report* multiqc for_multiqc
Alternatively, you could exclude the bowtie2 directory entirely via a fn_ignore_dirs section list item in multiqc_config.yaml, like this:
References
Main MultiQC links
- Website: http://multiqc.info/
- Documentation: http://multiqc.info/docs
- MultiQC Github repo: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC
- MultiQC test data repo: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC_TestData
MultiQC configuration files
- an example multiqc_config.yaml file: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC/blob/master/multiqc_config_example.yaml
- all multiqc_config.yaml defaults: https://github.com/ewels/MultiQC/blob/master/multiqc/utils/config_defaults.yaml
MultiQC custom data support
- structure of the custom data area of multiqc_config.yaml:
- available plot types:
- http://multiqc.info/docs/#plotting-functions
- while this section is written for Python programming, the options listed in each plot type's "config" block can be specified declaratively in any plot's pconfig section in the multiqc_config.yaml.
- example custom data files from their test data repo:
Example Reports from Anna
Below are descriptions of two projects I've assisted with lately using MultiQC to help pull together visualizations assessing experiment quality.
- These example MultiQC reports below were generated by running the multiqc binary on a command line.
- After inspecting them locally (by just opening them as files in a web browser), they were copied to a web-accessible location to share with others. Here, that location is Iyer Lab's web-accessible directory on corral.
Igor Ponomarev ATAC-seq data
ATAC-seq is a transposon-insertion sequencing method where an engineered, activate transposon inserts in accessible ("open") chromatin. It is considered to be a much simpler protocol to standard DNase-seq, and requires less starting material as well.
Igor Ponomarev's lab (in WCAAR) performed the ATAC-seq protocol on 5k and 50k cell nuclei from mouse brain, producing 2 paired-end datasets.
- http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/igor/mqc_report.html
- has both standard and custom data reports
Marcotte lab amplicon sequencing
The Marcotte lab is working on a deep mutational screening project of a human gene transformed into yeast as an amplicon on a plasmid. Here, the gene is MVK, a gene in the yeast cholesterol biosynthesis pathway. The hsMVK gene is amplified with an error-prone polymerase to produce point mutations. Both the native yeast gene and the human ortholog (with which it shares no sequence similarity) are under on/off promoter control. The idea is to compare the mutations that accumulate in the active hsMVK gene, after many growth cycles, with a background in which the hsMVK gene is present but not active (the yeast MVKis doing the work) to see which mutations are favored or disfavored. As part of this project, Riddhiman Garge produced 19 datasets.
- basic FastQC report
- report on BWA mem alignments of the datasets to hsMVK amplicon and plasmid backbone contigs
- http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/mvk/mvk_mqc_report.bwa.html
- standard reports from samtools flagstat, samtools idxstats, Picard MarkDuplicates
- custom data reports from bedtools genomecov and from insert size distribution data Anna computed
- report using custom data from a specialized deep mutational screening tool from the Jesse Bloom lab
- http://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/iyer/mvk/mvk_mqc_report.jbloom.html
- this tool looks only at the overlapping portions of paired-end R1 and R2 reads