Communications of the ACM
Researchers Improve Method For Finding Genetic Mistakes That Fuel Cancer
Jinghui Zhang, Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Computational Biology
Photo courtesy of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have developed the Clipping Reveals Structure (CREST) algorithm, which helps identify the chromosomal rearrangements and DNA insertions or deletions unique to cancer.
The researchers used CREST to identify 89 new structural differences in cancer genomes, revealing complex chromosomal rearrangements, including one that involved four chromosomes. "CREST is significantly more accurate and sensitive than existing methods of finding structural variations in next-generation sequencing data," says St. Jude's Jinghui Zhang.
CREST uses pieces of DNA known as soft clips to locate the sites of chromosomal rearrangement. "With the incorporation of CREST, we now can augment the existing approaches we have developed at Washington University to better detect and analyze important structural variants in human cancers," says Li Ding, Washington University's assistant director of medical genomics.
From St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
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