Biology subjects

Urban, L.

Publications and source records attributed to Urban, L..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Kipoi: accelerating the community exchange and reuse of predictive models for genomics

Advanced machine learning models applied to large-scale genomics datasets hold the promise to be major drivers for genome science. Once trained, such models can serve as a tool to probe the relationships between data modalities, including the effect of genetic variants on phenotype. However, lack of standardization and limited accessibility of trained models have hampered their impact in practice. To address this, we present Kipoi, a collaborative initiative to define standards and to foster reuse of trained models in genomics. Already, the Kipoi repository contains over 2,000 trained models that cover canonical prediction tasks in transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation. The Kipoi model standard grants automated software installation and provides unified interfaces to apply and interpret models. We illustrate Kipoi through canonical use cases, including model benchmarking, transfer learning, variant effect prediction, and building new models from existing ones. By providing a unified framework to archive, share, access, use, and build on models developed by the community, Kipoi will foster the dissemination and use of machine learning models in genomics.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2018

Combined single cell profiling of expression and DNA methylation reveals splicing regulation and heterogeneity

BackgroundAlternative splicing is a key regulatory mechanism in eukaryotic cells and increases the effective number of functionally distinct gene products. Using bulk RNA sequencing, splicing variation has been studied across human tissues and in genetically diverse populations. This has identified disease-relevant splicing events, as well as associations between splicing and genomic variations, including sequence composition and conservation. However, variability in splicing between single cells from the same tissue or cell type and its determinants remain poorly understood.\n\nResultsWe applied parallel DNA methylation and transcriptome sequencing to differentiating human induced pluripotent stem cells to characterize splicing variation (exon skipping) and its determinants. Our results shows that variation in single-cell splicing can be accurately predicted based on local sequence composition and genomic features. We observe moderate but consistent contributions from local DNA methylation profiles to splicing variation across cells. A combined model that is built based on sequence as well as DNA methylation information accurately predicts different splicing modes of individual cassette exons (AUC=0.85). These categories include the conventional inclusion and exclusion patterns, but also more subtle modes of cell-to-cell variation in splicing. Finally, we identified and characterized associations between DNA methylation and splicing changes during cell differentiation.\n\nConclusionsOur study yields new insights into alternative splicing at the single-cell level and reveals a previously underappreciated link between DNA methylation variation and splicing.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2017

Assessing the Gene Regulatory Landscape in 1,188 Human Tumors

Cancer is characterised by somatic genetic variation, but the effect of the majority of non-coding somatic variants and the interface with the germline genome are still unknown. We analysed the whole genome and RNA-Seq data from 1,188 human cancer patients as provided by the Pan-cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) project to map cis expression quantitative trait loci of somatic and germline variation and to uncover the causes of allele-specific expression patterns in human cancers. The availability of the first large-scale dataset with both whole genome and gene expression data enabled us to uncover the effects of the non-coding variation on cancer. In addition to confirming known regulatory effects, we identified novel associations between somatic variation and expression dysregulation, in particular in distal regulatory elements. Finally, we uncovered links between somatic mutational signatures and gene expression changes, including TERT and LMO2, and we explained the inherited risk factors in APOBEC-related mutational processes. This work represents the first large-scale assessment of the effects of both germline and somatic genetic variation on gene expression in cancer and creates a valuable resource cataloguing these effects.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2017

Germline determinants of the somatic mutation landscape in 2,642 cancer genomes

Cancers develop through somatic mutagenesis, however germline genetic variation can markedly contribute to tumorigenesis via diverse mechanisms. We discovered and phased 88 million germline single nucleotide variants, short insertions/deletions, and large structural variants in whole genomes from 2,642 cancer patients, and employed this genomic resource to study genetic determinants of somatic mutagenesis across 39 cancer types. Our analyses implicate damaging germline variants in a variety of cancer predisposition and DNA damage response genes with specific somatic mutation patterns. Mutations in the MBD4 DNA glycosylase gene showed association with elevated C>T mutagenesis at CpG dinucleotides, a ubiquitous mutational process acting across tissues. Analysis of somatic structural variation exposed complex rearrangement patterns, involving cycles of templated insertions and tandem duplications, in BRCA1-deficient tumours. Genome-wide association analysis implicated common genetic variation at the APOBEC3 gene cluster with reduced basal levels of somatic mutagenesis attributable to APOBEC cytidine deaminases across cancer types. We further inferred over a hundred polymorphic L1/LINE elements with somatic retrotransposition activity in cancer. Our study highlights the major impact of rare and common germline variants on mutational landscapes in cancer.

genomics↗