SRinversion: a tool for detecting short inversions by splitting and re-aligning poorly mapped and unmapped sequencing reads

Rapid development in sequencing technologies has dramatically improved our ability to detect genetic variants in human genome. However, current methods have variable sensitivities in detecting different types of genetic variants. One type of such genetic variants that is especially hard to detect is inversions. Analysis of public databases showed that few short inversions have been reported so far. Unlike reads that contain small insertions or deletions, which will be considered through gap alignment, reads carrying short inversions often have poor mapping quality or are unmapped, thus are often not further considered. As a result, the majority of short inversions might have been overlooked and require special algorithms for their detection.