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LeafCutter is a new tool that identifies variable intron splicing events from RNA-seq data for analysis of complex alternative splicing. The method does not require transcript annotation and can be used to map splicing quantitative trait loci.
Covariates for multiphenotype studies (CMS), a new approach for testing for associations from large-scale datasets, leverages genetic and environmental factors shared between correlated variables measured on the same samples. Applying CMS to real and simulated data demonstrates a large increase in power equivalent to that gained by doubling the sample size.
Graphtyper is a fast and scalable method for variant genotyping that aligns short-read sequence data to a pangenome. Graphtyper was able to accurately genotype ∼90 million sequence variants in the whole genomes of ∼28,000 Icelanders, including those in six HLA genes.
Adam Siepel and colleagues report a new computational method, LINSIGHT, that combines evolutionary conservation and functional genomic information to predict the fitness consequences of noncoding mutations in the human genome. They use LINSIGHT to show that fitness consequences of enhancer mutations depend on tissue and cell type specificity and promoter constraints.
Kun Zhang and colleagues present a metric called methylation haplotype load (MHL) that quantifies methylation patterns within blocks of tightly linked CpG dinucleotides. They show that the MHL can distinguish samples from different human somatic tissues and that it can be used to improve detection of cancer-derived circulating DNA and identify its tissue of origin.
Adam Phillippy, Curtis Van Tassell, Timothy Smith and colleagues present a new reference genome assembly for the domestic goat using a pipeline that improves contiguity of the assembly by more than 250-fold. The pipeline uses a combination of short- and long-read sequencing, optical mapping, and chromatin interaction mapping.
Stuart Orkin, Daniel Bauer and colleagues present DNA Striker, a computational tool to design variant-aware saturating-mutagenesis screens with multiple CRISPR-associated nucleases. They apply their methodology to the HBS1L-MYB intergenic region, which is associated with red-blood-cell traits, and identify putative regulatory elements that control MYB expression.