DeepRepeat: direct quantification of short tandem repeats on signal data from nanopore sequencing

Abstract Despite recent improvements in basecalling accuracy, nanopore sequencing still has higher error rates on short-tandem repeats (STRs). Instead of using basecalled reads, we developed DeepRepeat which converts ionic current signals into red-green-blue channels, thus transforming the repeat de...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Li Fang, Qian Liu, Alex Mas Monteys, Pedro Gonzalez-Alegre, Beverly L. Davidson, Kai Wang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2022-04-01
Series:Genome Biology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-022-02670-6
Description
Summary:Abstract Despite recent improvements in basecalling accuracy, nanopore sequencing still has higher error rates on short-tandem repeats (STRs). Instead of using basecalled reads, we developed DeepRepeat which converts ionic current signals into red-green-blue channels, thus transforming the repeat detection problem into an image recognition problem. DeepRepeat identifies and accurately quantifies telomeric repeats in the CHM13 cell line and achieves higher accuracy in quantifying repeats in long STRs than competing methods. We also evaluate DeepRepeat on genome-wide or candidate region datasets from seven different sources. In summary, DeepRepeat enables accurate quantification of long STRs and complements existing methods relying on basecalled reads.
ISSN:1474-760X