utr.annotation: a tool for annotating genomic variants that could influence post-transcriptional regulation

Whole genome sequencing of patient populations is identifying thousands of new variants in untranslated regions (UTRs). While the consequences of UTR mutations are not as easily predicted from primary sequence as coding mutations are, there are some known features of UTRs that modulate their function. utr.annotation is an R package that can be used to annotate potential deleterious variants in the UTR regions for both human and mouse species. Given a CSV or VCF format variant file, utr.annotation provides information of each variant on whether and how it alters known translational regulators including upstream open reading frames, upstream Kozak sequences, polyA signals, Kozak sequences at the annotated translation start site, start codons and stop codons, conservation scores in the variant position, and whether and how it changes ribosome loading based on a model derived from empirical data.