The Splicing Mutation Calculator web software described in:

Caminsky NG, Mucaki EJ and Rogan PK. Interpretation of mRNA splicing mutations in genetic disease: review of the literature and guidelines for information-theoretical analysis [version 2; referees: 2 approved] F1000Research 2015, 3:282 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.5654.2)

has been migrated to the MutationForecaster system (http://mutationforecaster.com).   Subscribers to MutationForecaster have unlimited access to this product.

The one year free trial to this commercially-developed software has ended.  The original  website has been deprecated and no longer provides this functionality.

In next generation sequencing, exomes in particular, the challenge is to find relevant pathogenic gene variants among a sea of superfluous sequence changes. But the track record for filtering the most likely causative changes is dismal (20-25%). Most filtering methods remove common variants but do little else. Cytognomix has developed CytoVA, software that relates variants to patient peer-reviewed phenotypes in real time. We are adding this to our MutationForecaster system. Check it out!

Peter Rogan will present:

“Genomic analysis of metastasis and tumor chemotherapy response based on information theory and machine learning”

Department of Computer Science

University of Windsor

Date:  Friday, November 13^th, 2015
Time: 11:00 am
Location: Chrysler Hall – G100

 Abstract: The integrated analyses of cancer phenotypes with complex genomic datasets has resulted in many new insights into diagnosis and prognosis. However, there is no single correct way to analyze these data, and the data themselves can vary significantly  in content and interpretation between different studies of the same tumor type.   We have used mutation, expression and copy number data to study breast cancer genes and genomes (hereditary and somatic). A major challenge in inherited breast cancer is the missing heritability; pathogenic mutations are not detected despite strong family historie. Our approach has been to prioritize functionally significant variants using information theory-based models of DNA and RNA binding protein binding sites.  These same approaches – when applied to breast tumour exome sequences – have revealed numerous missed mRNA splicing mutations, and identified mutated pathways, validated by RNA sequencing, that are overrepresented in these tumour genomes. Application of biochemically-inspired machine learning to these integrated genomic data from cell lines produces gene signatures that robustly predict therapeutic response that we have validated with patient tumor data. Machine learning is a promising general approach that can be used for other drugs and tumor types with good recall.

Peter Rogan will be presenting:

Seeking the “Missing Heritability” in High-Risk Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) Patients By Prioritizing Coding and Non-Coding Variants in 21 Genes.  Natasha Caminsky G, Eliseos Mucaki J,  Amelia Perri M, Ruipeng Lu, Matthew Halvorsen, Alain Laederach, Joan Knoll HM, Peter Rogan K

on Tuesday, November 10 from 12-2 PM in the poster session: Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics

in Montréal – Hôtel Bonaventure.

Scientific Program: link

Abstract:

Current BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) is often uninformative. The “missing heritability” may be due to variants in uninvestigated regions of these genes or variants in other genes. We have applied a unified framework based on information theory (IT) to predict and prioritize non-coding variants of uncertain significance. We captured complete gene sequences of 21 diseaserelevant genes in HBOC patients with uninformative hereditary predisposition testing (N=336) by hybridization enrichment using ab initio single copy probes that comprehensively span non-coding regions and flanking sequences of ATM, ATP8B1, BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, CDH1, CHEK2, EPCAM, MLH1, MRE11A, MSH2, MSH6, MUTYH, NBN, PALB2, PMS2, PTEN, RAD51B, STK11, TP53, and XRCC2. We identified 38,538 unique variants. Eight were likely pathogenic BRCA1/2 mutations previously undetected by clinical testing. Eight proteintruncating mutations were identified in non-BRCA genes, the majority of which were in PALB2 (N=5), and 148 missense variants were flagged. Information weight matrices were derived for transcription factor (TFBS), splicing regulatory (SRBS), and RNA-binding (RBBS) protein binding sites from high-throughput sequencing data. IT analysis prioritized 12 variants affecting splicing (6 natural, 6 cryptic), 71 TFBS, 218 SRBS, and 29 RBBS. Co-segregation analysis found the relative risk of breast cancer for likely pathogenic BRCA variants torange from 1.55 to 75.78. According to clinically accepted guidelines, twenty-three were possibly pathogenic (13 confirmed by Sanger sequencing to date), 472 were of uncertain significance, and all remaining were likely not pathogenic. Complete gene analysis of BRCA1/2 and other genes is a successful strategy for identifying probable mutations in previously uninformative HBOC patients.