A Deep Learning Approach for Detecting Copy Number Variation in Next-Generation Sequencing Data.

Journal: G3 (Bethesda, Md.)
PMID:

Abstract

Copy number variants (CNV) are associated with phenotypic variation in several species. However, properly detecting changes in copy numbers of sequences remains a difficult problem, especially in lower quality or lower coverage next-generation sequencing data. Here, inspired by recent applications of machine learning in genomics, we describe a method to detect duplications and deletions in short-read sequencing data. In low coverage data, machine learning appears to be more powerful in the detection of CNVs than the gold-standard methods of coverage estimation alone, and of equal power in high coverage data. We also demonstrate how replicating training sets allows a more precise detection of CNVs, even identifying novel CNVs in two genomes previously surveyed thoroughly for CNVs using long read data.

Authors

  • Tom Hill
    4055 Haworth Hall, The Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Kansas, 1200 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045. tom.hill@ku.edu.
  • Robert L Unckless
    4055 Haworth Hall, The Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Kansas, 1200 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045.