VCF Format
From GSA
The VCF file format was developed for the 1000 Genomes project, and has gone through a handful of major revisions.
Spec
The offical VCF spec is available on the 1000 Genomes Website here:
http://vcftools.sourceforge.net/specs.html
As of August 30th, 2010, version 4.0 is the latest revision. VCF files are not backward compatible in terms of the spec; the VCF reader available in Tribble can read in the version 4 format, as well as files in the version 3.3 format style.
Petr Danecek has posted a particularly nice poster about the VCF format
Tools
- VCFTools is an excellent resource for working with VCF files
