bioRxiv ScienceSearch

Biology subjects

Devine, S. E.

Publications and source records attributed to Devine, S. E..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Mako: a graph-based pattern growth approach to detect complex structural variants

Complex structural variants (CSVs) are genomic alterations that have more than two breakpoints and are considered as simultaneous occurrence of simple structural variants. However, detecting the compounded mutational signals of CSVs is challenging through a commonly used model-match strategy. As a result, there has been limited progress for CSV discovery compared with simple structural variants. We systematically analyzed the multi-breakpoint connection feature of CSVs, and proposed Mako, utilizing a bottom-up guided model-free strategy, to detect CSVs from paired-end short-read sequencing. Specifically, we implemented a graph-based pattern growth approach, where the graph depicts potential breakpoint connections and pattern growth enables CSV detection without predefined models. Comprehensive evaluations on both simulated and real datasets revealed that Mako outperformed other algorithms. Notably, validation rates of CSV on real data based on experimental and computational validations as well as manual inspections are around 70%, where the medians of experimental and computational breakpoint shift are 13bp and 26bp, respectively. Moreover, Mako CSV subgraph effectively characterized the breakpoint connections of a CSV event and uncovered a total of 15 CSV types, including two novel types of adjacent segments swap and tandem dispersed duplication. Further analysis of these CSVs also revealed impact of sequence homology in the formation of CSVs. Mako is publicly available at https://github.com/jiadong324/Mako.

bioinformatics

Expectations and blind spots for structural variation detection from short-read alignment and long-read assembly

Virtually all genome sequencing efforts in national biobanks, complex and Mendelian disease programs, and emerging clinical diagnostic approaches utilize short-reads (srWGS), which present constraints for genome-wide discovery of structural variants (SVs). Alternative long-read single molecule technologies (lrWGS) offer significant advantages for genome assembly and SV detection, while these technologies are currently cost prohibitive for large-scale disease studies and clinical diagnostics (∼5-12X higher cost than comparable coverage srWGS). Moreover, only dozens of such genomes are currently publicly accessible by comparison to millions of srWGS genomes that have been commissioned for international initiatives. Given this ubiquitous reliance on srWGS in human genetics and genomics, we sought to characterize and quantify the properties of SVs accessible to both srWGS and lrWGS to establish benchmarks and expectations in ongoing medical and population genetic studies, and to project the added value of SVs uniquely accessible to each technology. In analyses of three trios with matched srWGS and lrWGS from the Human Genome Structural Variation Consortium (HGSVC), srWGS captured ∼11,000 SVs per genome using reference-based algorithms, while haplotype-resolved assembly from lrWGS identified ∼25,000 SVs per genome. Detection power and precision for SV discovery varied dramatically by genomic context and variant class: 9.7% of the current GRCh38 reference is defined by segmental duplications (SD) and simple repeats (SR), yet 91.4% of deletions that were specifically discovered by lrWGS localized to these regions. Across the remaining 90.3% of the human reference, we observed extremely high concordance (93.8%) for deletions discovered by srWGS and lrWGS after error correction using the raw lrWGS reads. Conversely, lrWGS was superior for detection of insertions across all genomic contexts. Given that the non-SD/SR sequences span 90.3% of the GRCh38 reference, and encompass 95.9% of coding exons in currently annotated disease associated genes, improved sensitivity from lrWGS to discover novel and interpretable pathogenic deletions not already accessible to srWGS is likely to be incremental. However, these analyses highlight the added value of assembly-based lrWGS to create new catalogues of functional insertions and transposable elements, as well as disease associated repeat expansions in genomic regions previously recalcitrant to routine assessment.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.View Full Text

genomics

A fully phased accurate assembly of an individual human genome

The prevailing genome assembly paradigm is to produce consensus sequences that "collapse" parental haplotypes into a consensus sequence. Here, we leverage the chromosome-wide phasing and scaffolding capabilities of single-cell strand sequencing (Strand-seq)1,2 and combine them with high-fidelity (HiFi) long sequencing reads3, in a novel reference-free workflow for diploid de novo genome assembly. Employing this strategy, we produce completely phased de novo genome assemblies separately for each haplotype of a single individual of Puerto Rican origin (HG00733) in the absence of parental data. The assemblies are accurate (QV > 40), highly contiguous (contig N50 > 25 Mbp) with low switch error rates (0.4%) providing fully phased single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), indels, and structural variants (SVs). A comparison of Oxford Nanopore and PacBio phased assemblies identifies 150 regions that are preferential sites of contig breaks irrespective of sequencing technology or phasing algorithms.

bioinformatics