Searching thousands of genomes to classify somatic and novel structural variants using STIX

Nat Methods. 2022 Apr;19(4):445-448. doi: 10.1038/s41592-022-01423-4. Epub 2022 Apr 8.

Abstract

Structural variants are associated with cancers and developmental disorders, but challenges with estimating population frequency remain a barrier to prioritizing mutations over inherited variants. In particular, variability in variant calling heuristics and filtering limits the use of current structural variant catalogs. We present STIX, a method that, instead of relying on variant calls, indexes and searches the raw alignments from thousands of samples to enable more comprehensive allele frequency estimation.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Genome*
  • Genomic Structural Variation* / genetics
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Humans
  • Neoplasms* / genetics
  • Software