dbSNP and low quality reads

[Philcolson]

I'm rather new to the bioinformatics world - and I have a (hopefully) simple question.

I'm dealing with a program that filters somatic mutations from germline mutations. My question is, what does this comment mean:

## this script modifies the low_bam.out file by adding the database realSNP# to it. This avoids dbSNP markers being called somatic in low_bam.out because the run does not include the dbSNP check

and why is it important?

I appreciate any comments and will answer any questions I can.