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RationaleNosocomial infections are a major healthcare challenge, developing in over 20% of patients aged 45 or over undergoing major-abdominal surgery, with postoperative pneumonia associated with an almost five-fold increase in 30-day mortality.ObjectivesTo describe immune-pathways and gene-networks altered following major-abdominal surgery and identify transcriptomic patterns associated with postoperative pneumonia.Methods and MeasurementsFrom a prospective consecutive cohort (n=150) undergoing major-abdominal surgery whole-blood RNA was collected preoperatively and at three time-points postoperatively (2-6, 24 and 48hrs). Twelve patients diagnosed with postoperative pneumonia and 27 matched patients remaining infection-free were identified for analysis with RNA-sequencing.Main ResultsCompared to preoperative sampling, 3,639 genes were upregulated and 5,043 downregulated at 2-6hrs. Pathway-analysis demonstrated innate-immune activation with neutrophil-degranulation and Toll-like-receptor signalling upregulation alongside adaptiveimmune suppression. Cell-type deconvolution of preoperative RNA-sequencing revealed elevated S100A8/9-high neutrophils alongside reduced naïve CD4 T-cells in those later developing pneumonia. Preoperatively, a gene-signature characteristic of neutrophil-degranulation was associated with postoperative pneumonia acquisition (P=0.00092). A previously reported Sepsis Response Signature (SRSq) score, reflecting neutrophil-dysfunction and a more dysregulated host response, at 48hrs postoperatively, differed between patients subsequently developing pneumonia and those remaining infection-free (P=0.045). Analysis of the novel neutrophil gene-signature and SRSq scores in independent major-abdominal surgery and polytrauma cohorts indicated good predictive performance in identifying patients suffering later infection.ConclusionsMajor-abdominal surgery acutely upregulates innate-immune pathways while simultaneously suppressing adaptive-immune pathways. This is more prominent in patients developing postoperative pneumonia. Preoperative transcriptomic signatures characteristic of neutrophil-degranulation and postoperative SRSq scores may be useful predictors of subsequent pneumonia risk.

Genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas9 technology enables simple, efficient and precise genomic modifications in human cells. Conventional immortalized cell lines can be easily edited or screened using genome-wide libraries with lentiviral transduction. However, cell types derived from the differentiation of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC), which often represent more relevant, patient-derived models for human pathology, are much more difficult to engineer as CRISPR/Cas9 delivery to these differentiated cells can be inefficient and toxic. Here, we present an efficient, lentiviral transduction protocol for delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 to macrophages derived from human iPSC with efficiencies close to 100%. We demonstrate CRISPR/Cas9 knockouts for three nonessential proof-of-concept genes—HPRT1, PPIB and CDK4. We then scale the protocol and validate for a genome-wide pooled CRISPR/Cas9 loss-of-function screen. This methodology enables, for the first time, systematic exploration of macrophage involvement in immune responses, chronic inflammation, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer progression, using efficient genome editing techniques.

Bringing together cancer genomes from different projects increases power and allows the investigation of pan-cancer, molecular mechanisms. However, working with whole genomes sequenced over several years in different sequencing centres requires a framework to compare the quality of these sequences. We used the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes cohort as a test case to construct such a framework. This cohort contains whole cancer genomes of 2832 donors from 18 sequencing centres. We developed a non-redundant set of five quality control (QC) measurements to establish a star rating system. These QC measures reflect known differences in sequencing protocol and provide a guide to downstream analyses and allow for exclusion of samples of poor quality. We have found that this is an effective framework of quality measures. The implementation of the framework is available at: https://dockstore.org/containers/quay.io/jwerner_dkfz/pancanqc:1.2.2., Working with cancer genomes from multiple projects can increase investigative power, but quality of sequences can vary. Here, the authors present a framework for comparing whole genome sequencing quality to help researchers guide downstream analyses and exclude poor quality samples.

Natural Killer (NK) cells are innate lymphocytes with central roles in immunosurveillance and are implicated in autoimmune pathogenesis. The degree to which regulatory variants affect NK gene expression is poorly understood. We performed expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) mapping of negatively selected NK cells from a population of healthy Europeans (n=245). We find a significant subset of genes demonstrate eQTL specific to NK cells and these are highly informative of human disease, in particular autoimmunity. An NK cell transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) across five common autoimmune diseases identified further novel associations at 27 genes. In addition to these cis observations, we find novel master-regulatory regions impacting expression of trans gene networks at regions including 19q13.4, the Killer cell Immunoglobulin-like Receptor (KIR) Region, GNLY and MC1R. Our findings provide new insights into the unique biology of NK cells, demonstrating markedly different eQTL from other immune cells, with implications for disease mechanisms.

Driven by the necessity to survive environmental pathogens, the human immune system has evolved exceptional diversity and plasticity, to which several factors contribute including inheritable structural polymorphism of the underlying genes. Characterizing this variation is challenging due to the complexity of these loci, which contain extensive regions of paralogy, segmental duplication and high copy-number repeats, but recent progress in long-read sequencing and optical mapping techniques suggests this problem may now be tractable. Here we assess this by using long-read sequencing platforms from PacBio and Oxford Nanopore, supplemented with short-read sequencing and Bionano optical mapping, to sequence DNA extracted from CD14+ monocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a single European individual identified as HV31. We use this data to build a de novo assembly of eight genomic regions encoding four key components of the immune system, namely the human leukocyte antigen, immunoglobulins, T cell receptors, and killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors. Validation of our assembly using k-mer based and alignment approaches suggests that it has high accuracy, with estimated base-level error rates below 1 in 10 kb, although we identify a small number of remaining structural errors. We use the assembly to identify heterozygous and homozygous structural variation in comparison to GRCh38. Despite analyzing only a single individual, we find multiple large structural variants affecting core genes at all three immunoglobulin regions and at two of the three T cell receptor regions. Several of these variants are not accurately callable using current algorithms, implying that further methodological improvements are needed. Our results demonstrate that assessing haplotype variation in these regions is possible given sufficiently accurate long-read and associated data; application of these methods to larger samples would provide a broader catalogue of germline structural variation at these loci, an important step toward making these regions accessible to large-scale genetic association studies.

MC3 Working Group: Rehan Akbani21, Pavana Anur22, Matthew H. Bailey1,2,3, Alex Buchanan9, Kami Chiotti9, Kyle Covington12,23, Allison Creason9, Li Ding1,2,3,20, Kyle Ellrott9, Yu Fan21, Steven Foltz1,2, Gad Getz8,14,15,16, Walker Hale12, David Haussler24,25, Julian M. Hess8,26, Carolyn M. Hutter27, Cyriac Kandoth28, Katayoon Kasaian29,30, Melpomeni Kasapi27, Dave Larson1 , Ignaty Leshchiner8, John Letaw31, Singer Ma32, Michael D. McLellan1,3,20, Yifei Men32, Gordon B. Mills33,34, Beifang Niu35, Myron Peto22, Amie Radenbaugh24, Sheila M. Reynolds36, Gordon Saksena8, Heidi Sofia27, Chip Stewart8, Adam J. Struck31, Joshua M. Stuart24,37, Wenyi Wang21, John N. Weinstein38, David A. Wheeler12,13, Christopher K. Wong24,39, Liu Xi12 & Kai Ye40,41 21Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. 22Molecular and Medical Genetics, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA. 23Castle Biosciences Inc, Friendswood, TX 77546, USA. 24UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. 25Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. 26Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Cancer Research, Charlestown, MA 02114, USA. 27National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. 28Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA. 29Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, ON M5G 0A3, Canada. 30Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, BC Cancer, Vancouver, BC V5Z 4S6, Canada. 31Computational Biology Program, School of Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA. 32DNAnexus Inc, Mountain View, CA 94040, USA. 33Department of Systems Biology, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. 34Precision Oncology, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA. 35Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. 36Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, WA 98109, USA. 37Department of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. 38Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and Department of Systems Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. 39Biomolecular Engineering Department, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. 40School of Elect, PCAWG novel somatic mutation calling methods working group: Matthew H. Bailey1,2,3, Beifang Niu35, Matthias Bieg42,43, Paul C. Boutros6,44,45,46, Ivo Buchhalter43,47,48, Adam P. Butler49, Ken Chen50, Zechen Chong51, Li Ding1,2,3,20, Oliver Drechsel52,53, Lewis Jonathan Dursi6,7, Roland Eils47,48,54,55, Kyle Ellrott9, Shadrielle M. G. Espiritu6, Yu Fan21, Robert S. Fulton1,3,20, Shengjie Gao56, Josep L. l. Gelpi57,58, Mark B. Gerstein5,18,19, Gad Getz8,14,15,16, Santiago Gonzalez59,60, Ivo G. Gut52,61, Faraz Hach62,63, Michael C. Heinold47,48, Julian M. Hess8,26, Jonathan Hinton49, Taobo Hu64, Vincent Huang6, Yi Huang65,66, Barbara Hutter43,67,68, David R. Jones49, Jongsun Jung69, Natalie Jäger47, Hyung-Lae Kim70, Kortine Kleinheinz47,48, Sushant Kumar5,19, Yogesh Kumar64, Christopher M. Lalansingh6, Ignaty Leshchiner8, Ivica Letunic71, Dimitri Livitz8, Eric Z. Ma64, Yosef E. Maruvka8,26,72, R. Jay Mashl1,2, Michael D. McLellan1,3,20, Andrew Menzies49, Ana Milovanovic57, Morten Muhlig Nielsen73, Stephan Ossowski52,53,74, Nagarajan Paramasivam43,47, Jakob Skou Pedersen73,75, Marc D. Perry76,77, Montserrat Puiggròs57, Keiran M. Raine49, Esther Rheinbay8,14,72, Romina Royo57, S. Cenk Sahinalp62,78,79, Gordon Saksena8, Iman Sarrafi62,78, Matthias Schlesner47,80, Jared T. Simpson6,17, Lucy Stebbings49, Chip Stewart8, Miranda D. Stobbe52,61, Jon W. Teague49, Grace Tiao8, David Torrents57,81, Jeremiah A. Wala8,14,82, Jiayin Wang1,40,66, Wenyi Wang21, Sebastian M. Waszak60, Joachim Weischenfeldt60,83,84, Michael C. Wendl1,10,11, Johannes Werner47,85, Zhenggang Wu64, Hong Xue64, Sergei Yakneen60, Takafumi N. Yamaguchi6, Kai Ye40,41, Venkata D. Yellapantula20,86, Christina K. Yung76 & Junjun Zhang76, PCAWG Consortium: Lauri A. Aaltonen87, Federico Abascal49, Adam Abeshouse88, Hiroyuki Aburatani89, David J. Adams49, Nishant Agrawal90, Keun Soo Ahn91, Sung-Min Ahn92, Hiroshi Aikata93, Rehan Akbani21, Kadir C. Akdemir50, Hikmat Al-Ahmadie88, Sultan T. Al-Sedairy94, Fatima Al-Shahrour95, Malik Alawi96,97, Monique Albert98, Kenneth Aldape99,100, Ludmil B. Alexandrov49,101,102, Adrian Ally30, Kathryn Alsop103, Eva G. Alvarez104,105,106, Fernanda Amary107, Samirkumar B. Amin108,109,110, Brice Aminou76, Ole Ammerpohl111,112, Matthew J. Anderson113, Yeng Ang114, Davide Antonello115, Pavana Anur22, Samuel Aparicio116, Elizabeth L. Appelbaum1,117, Yasuhito Arai118, Axel Aretz119, Koji Arihiro93, Shun-ichi Ariizumi120, Joshua Armenia121, Laurent Arnould122, Sylvia Asa123,124, Yassen Assenov125, Gurnit Atwal6,126,127, Sietse Aukema112,128, J. Todd Auman129, Miriam R. Aure130, Philip Awadalla6,126, Marta Aymerich131, Gary D. Bader126, Adrian Baez-Ortega132, Matthew H. Bailey1,2,3, Peter J. Bailey133, Miruna Balasundaram30, Saianand Balu134, Pratiti Bandopadhayay8,135,136, Rosamonde E. Banks137, Stefano Barbi138, Andrew P. Barbour139,140, Jonathan Barenboim6, Jill Barnholtz-Sloan141,142, Hugh Barr143, Elisabet Barrera59, John Bartlett98,144, Javier Bartolome57, Claudio Bassi115, Oliver F. Bathe145,146, Daniel Baumhoer147, Prashant Bavi148, Stephen B. Baylin149,150, Wojciech Bazant59, Duncan Beardsmore151, Timothy A. Beck152,153, Sam Behjati49, Andreas Behren154, Beifang Niu35, Cindy Bell155, Sergi Beltran52,61, Christopher Benz156, Andrew Berchuck157, Anke K. Bergmann158, Erik N. Bergstrom101,102, Benjamin P. Berman159,160,161, Daniel M. Berney162, Stephan H. Bernhart163,164,165, Rameen Beroukhim8,14,82, Mario Berrios166, Samantha Bersani167, Johanna Bertl73,168, Miguel Betancourt169, Vinayak Bhandari6,44, Shriram G. Bhosle49, Andrew V. Biankin133,170,171,172, Matthias Bieg42,43, Darell Bigner173, Hans Binder163,164, Ewan Birney59, Michael Birrer72, Nidhan K. Biswas174, Bodil Bjerkehagen147,175, Tom Bodenheimer134, Lori Boice176, Giada Bonizzato177, Johann S. De Bono178, Arnoud Boot179,180, Moiz S. Bootwalla166, Ake Borg181, Arndt Borkhardt182, Keith A. Boroevich183,184, Ivan Borozan6, Christoph Borst185, Marcus Bosenberg186, Mattia Bosio52,53,57, Jacqueline Boultwood187, Guillaume Bourque188,189, Paul C. Boutros6,44,45,46, G. Steven Bova190, David T. Bowen49,191, Reanne Bowlby30, David D. L. Bowtell103, Sandrine Boyault192, Rich Boyce59, Jeffrey Boyd193, Alvis Brazma59, Paul Brennan194, Daniel S. Brewer195,196, Arie B. Brinkman197, Robert G. Bristow44,198,199,200,201, Russell R. Broaddus99, Jane E. Brock202, Malcolm Brock203, Annegien Broeks204, Angela N. Brooks8,24,37,82, Denise Brooks30, Benedikt Brors67,205,206, Søren Brunak207,208, Timothy J. C. Bruxner113,209, Alicia L. Bruzos104,105,106, Alex Buchanan9, Ivo Buchhalter43,47,48, Christiane Buchholz210, Susan Bullman8,82, Hazel Burke211, Birgit Burkhardt212, Kathleen H. Burns213,214, John Busanovich8,215, Carlos D. Bustamante216,217, Adam P. Butler49, Atul J. Butte218, Niall J. Byrne76, Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale130,219, Samantha J. Caesar-Johnson220, Andy Cafferkey59, Declan Cahill221, Claudia Calabrese59,60, Carlos Caldas222,223, Fabien Calvo224, Niedzica Camacho178, Peter J. Campbell49,225, Elias Campo226,227, Cinzia Cantù177, Shaolong Cao21, Thomas E. Carey228, Joana Carlevaro-Fita229,230,231, Rebecca Carlsen30, Ivana Cataldo167,177, Mario Cazzola232, Jonathan Cebon154, Robert Cerfolio233, Dianne E. Chadwick234, Dimple Chakravarty235, Don Chalmers236, Calvin Wing Yiu Chan47,237, Kin Chan238, Michelle Chan-Seng-Yue148, Vishal S. Chandan239, David K. Chang133,170, Stephen J. Chanock240, Lorraine A. Chantrill170,241, Aurélien Chateigner76,242, Nilanjan Chatterjee149,243, Kazuaki Chayama93, Hsiao-Wei Chen114,121, Jieming Chen218, Ken Chen50, Yiwen Chen21, Zhaohong Chen244, Andrew D. Cherniack8,82, Jeremy Chien245, Yoke-Eng Chiew246,247, Suet-Feung Chin222,223, Juok Cho8, Sunghoon Cho248, Jung Kyoon Choi249, Wan Choi250, Christine Chomienne251, Zechen Chong51, Su Pin Choo252, Angela Chou170,246, Angelika N. Christ113, Elizabeth L. Christie103, Eric Chuah30, Carrie Cibulskis8, Kristian Cibulskis8, Sara Cingarlini253, Peter Clapham49, Alexander Claviez254, Sean Cleary148,255, Nicole Cloonan256, Marek Cmero257,258,259, Colin C. Collins62, Ashton A. Connor255,260, Susanna L. Cooke133, Colin S. Cooper178,196,261, Leslie Cope149, Vincenzo Corbo138,177, Matthew G. Cordes1,262, Stephen M. Cordner263, Isidro Cortés-Ciriano264,265,266, Kyle Covington12,23, Prue A. Cowin267, Brian Craft24, David Craft8,268, Chad J. Creighton269, Yupeng Cun270, Erin Curley271, Ioana Cutcutache179,180, Karolina Czajka272, Bogdan Czerniak99,273, Rebecca A. Dagg274, Ludmila Danilova149, Maria Vittoria Davi275, Natalie R. Davidson276,277,278,279,280, Helen Davies49,281,282, Ian J. Davis283, Brandi N. Davis-Dusenbery284, Kevin J. Dawson49, Francisco M. De La Vega216,217,285, Ricardo De Paoli-Iseppi211, Timothy Defreitas8, Angelo P. Dei Tos286, Olivier Delaneau287,288,289, John A. Demchok220, Jonas Demeulemeester290,291, German M. Demidov52,53,74, Deniz Demircioğlu292,293, Nening M. Dennis221, Robert E. Denroche148, Stefan C. Dentro49,290,294, Nikita Desai76, Vikram Deshpande72, Amit G. Deshwar295, Christine Desmedt296,297, Jordi Deu-Pons298,299, Noreen Dhalla30, Neesha C. Dhani300, Priyanka Dhingra301,302, Rajiv Dhir303, Anthony DiBiase304, Klev Diamanti305, Li Ding1,2,3,20, Shuai Ding306, Huy Q. Dinh159, Luc Dirix307, HarshaVardhan Doddapaneni12, Nilgun Donmez62,78, Michelle T. Dow244, Ronny Drapkin308, Oliver Drechsel52,53, Ruben M. Drews223, Serge Serge49, Tim Dudderidge150,221, Ana Dueso-Barroso57, Andrew J. Dunford8, Michael Dunn309, Lewis Jonathan Dursi6,7, Fraser R. Duthie133,310, Ken Dutton-Regester311, Jenna Eagles272, Douglas F. Easton312,313, Stuart Edmonds314, Paul A. Edwards223,315, Sandra E. Edwards178, Rosalind A. Eeles178,221, Anna Ehinger316, Juergen Eils54,55, Roland Eils47,48,54,55, Adel El-Naggar99,273, Matthew Eldridge223, Kyle Ellrott9, Serap Erkek60, Georgia Escaramis53,317,318, Shadrielle M. G. Espiritu6, Xavier Estivill53,319, Dariush Etemadmoghadam103, Jorunn E. Eyfjord320, Bishoy M. Faltas280, Daiming Fan321, Yu Fan21, William C. Faquin72, Claudiu Farcas244, Matteo Fassan322, Aquila Fatima323, Francesco Favero324, Nodirjon Fayzullaev76, Ina Felau220, Sian Fereday103, Martin L. Ferguson325, Vincent Ferretti76,326, Lars Feuerbach205, Matthew A. Field327, J. Lynn Fink57,113, Gaetano Finocchiaro328, Cyril Fisher221, Matthew W. Fittall290, Anna Fitzgerald329, Rebecca C. Fitzgerald282, Adrienne M. Flanagan330, Neil E. Fleshner331, Paul Flicek59, John A. Foekens332, Kwun M. Fong333, Nuno A. Fonseca59,334, Christopher S. Foster335,336, Natalie S. Fox6, Michael Fraser6, Scott Frazer8, Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern337, William Friedman338, Joan Frigola298, Catrina C. Fronick1,262, Akihiro Fujimoto184, Masashi Fujita184, Masashi Fukayama339, Lucinda A. Fulton1 , Robert S. Fulton1,3,20, Mayuko Furuta184, P. Andrew Futreal340, Anja Füllgrabe59, Stacey B. Gabriel8, Steven Gallinger148,255,260, Carlo Gambacorti-Passerini341, Jianjiong Gao121, Shengjie Gao56, Levi Garraway82, Øystein Garred342, Erik Garrison49, Dale W. Garsed103, Nils Gehlenborg8,343, Josep L. l. Gelpi57,58, Joshy George110, Daniela S. Gerhard344, Clarissa Gerhauser345, Jeffrey E. Gershenwald346,347, Mark B. Gerstein5,18,19, Moritz Gerstung59,60, Gad Getz8,14,15,16, Mohammed Ghori49, Ronald Ghossein348, Nasra H. Giama349, Richard A. Gibbs12, Anthony J. Gill170,350, Pelvender Gill351, Dilip D. Giri348, Dominik Glodzik49, Vincent J. Gnanapragasam352,353, Maria Elisabeth Goebler354, Mary J. Goldman24, Carmen Gomez355, Santiago Gonzalez59,60, Abel Gonzalez-Perez298,299,356, Dmitry A. Gordenin357, James Gossage358, Kunihito Gotoh359, Ramaswamy Govindan3, Dorthe Grabau360, Janet S. Graham133,361, Robert C. Grant148,260, Anthony R. Green315, Eric Green27, Liliana Greger59, Nicola Grehan282, Sonia Grimaldi177, Sean M. Grimmond362, Robert L. Grossman363, Adam Grundhoff97,364, Gunes Gundem88, Qianyun Guo75, Manaswi Gupta8, Shailja Gupta365, Ivo G. Gut52,61, Marta Gut52,61, Jonathan Göke292,366, Gavin Ha8, Andrea Haake111, David Haan37, Siegfried Haas185, Kerstin Haase290, James E. Haber367, Nina Habermann60, Faraz Hach62,63, Syed Haider6, Natsuko Hama118, Freddie C. Hamdy351, Anne Hamilton267, Mark P. Hamilton368, Leng Han369, George B. Hanna370, Martin Hansmann371, Nicholas J. Haradhvala8,72, Olivier Harismendy102,372, Ivon Harliwong113, Arif O. Harmanci5,373, Eoghan Harrington374, Takanori Hasegawa375, David Haussler24,25, Steve Hawkins223, Shinya Hayami376, Shuto Hayashi375, D. Neil Hayes134,377,378, Stephen J. Hayes379,380, Nicholas K. Hayward211,311, Steven Hazell221, Yao He381, Allison P. Heath382, Simon C. Heath52,61, David Hedley300, Apurva M. Hegde38, David I. Heiman8, Michael C. Heinold47,48, Zachary Heins88, Lawrence E. Heisler152, Eva Hellstrom-Lindberg383, Mohamed Helmy384, Seong Gu Heo385, Austin J. Hepperla134, José María Heredia-Genestar386, Carl Herrmann47,48,387, Peter Hersey211, Julian M. Hess8,26, Holmfridur Hilmarsdottir320, Jonathan Hinton49, Satoshi Hirano388, Nobuyoshi Hiraoka389, Katherine A. Hoadley134,390, Asger Hobolth75,168, Ermin Hodzic78, Jessica I. Hoell182, Steve Hoffmann163,164,165,391, Oliver Hofmann392, Andrea Holbrook166, Aliaksei Z. Holik53, Michael A. Hollingsworth393, Oliver Holmes209,311, Robert A. Holt30, Chen Hong205,237, Eun Pyo Hong385, Jongwhi H. Hong394, Gerrit K. Hooijer395, Henrik Hornshøj73, Fumie Hosoda118, Yong Hou56,396, Volker Hovestadt397, William Howat352, Alan P. Hoyle134, Ralph H. Hruban149, Jianhong Hu12, Taobo Hu64, Xing Hua240, Kuan-lin Huang1,398, Mei Huang176, Mi Ni Huang179,180, Vincent Huang6, Yi Huang65,66, Wolfgang Huber60, Thomas J. Hudson272,399, Michael Hummel400, Jillian A. Hung246,247, David Huntsman401, Ted R. Hupp402, Jason Huse88, Matthew R. Huska403, Barbara Hutter43,67,68, Carolyn M. Hutter27, Daniel Hübschmann48,54,404,405,406, Christine A. Iacobuzio-Donahue348, Charles David Imbusch205, Marcin Imielinski407,408, Seiya Imoto375, William B. Isaacs409, Keren Isaev6,44, Shumpei Ishikawa410, Murat Iskar397, S. M. Ashiqul Islam244, Michael Ittmann411,412,413, Sinisa Ivkovic284, Jose M. G. Izarzugaza414, Jocelyne Jacquemier415, Valerie Jakrot211, Nigel B. Jamieson133,172,416, Gun Ho Jang148, Se Jin Jang417, Joy C. Jayaseelan12, Reyka Jayasinghe1 , Stuart R. Jefferys134, Karine Jegalian418, Jennifer L. Jennings419, Seung-Hyup Jeon250, Lara Jerman60,420, Yuan Ji421,422, Wei Jiao6, Peter A. Johansson311, Amber L. Johns170, Jeremy Johns272, Rory Johnson230,423, Todd A. Johnson183, Clemency Jolly290, Yann Joly424, Jon G. Jonasson320, Corbin D. Jones425, David R. Jones49, David T. W. Jones426,427, Nic Jones428, Steven J. M. Jones30, Jos Jonkers204, Young Seok Ju49,249, Hartmut Juhl429, Jongsun Jung69, Malene Juul73, Randi Istrup Juul73, Sissel Juul374, Natalie Jäger47, Rolf Kabbe47, Andre Kahles276,277,278,279,430, Abdullah Kahraman431,432,433, Vera B. Kaiser434, Hojabr Kakavand211, Sangeetha Kalimuthu148, Christof von Kalle405, Koo Jeong Kang91, Katalin Karaszi351, Beth Karlan435, Rosa Karlić436, Dennis Karsch437, Katayoon Kasaian29,30, Karin S. Kassahn113,438, Hitoshi Katai439, Mamoru Kato440, Hiroto Katoh410, Yoshiiku Kawakami93, Jonathan D. Kay117, Stephen H. Kazakoff209,311, Marat D. Kazanov441,442,443, Maria Keays59, Electron Kebebew444,445, Richard F. Kefford446, Manolis Kellis8,447, James G. Kench170,350,448, Catherine J. Kennedy246,247, Jules N. A. Kerssemakers47, David Khoo273, Vincent Khoo221, Narong Khuntikeo115,449, Ekta Khurana301,302,450,451, Helena Kilpinen117, Hark Kyun Kim452, Hyung-Lae Kim70, Hyung-Yong Kim415, Hyunghwan Kim250, Jaegil Kim8, Jihoon Kim453, Jong K. Kim454, Youngwook Kim455,456, Tari A. King457,458,459, Wolfram Klapper128, Kortine Kleinheinz47,48, Leszek J. Klimczak460, Stian Knappskog49,461, Michael Kneba437, Bartha M. Knoppers424, Youngil Koh462,463, Jan Komorowski305,464, Daisuke Komura410, Mitsuhiro Komura375, Gu Kong415, Marcel Kool426,465, Jan O. Korbel59,60, Viktoriya Korchina12, Andrey Korshunov465, Michael Koscher465, Roelof Koster466, Zsofia Kote-Jarai178, Antonios Koures244, Milena Kovacevic284, Barbara Kremeyer49, Helene Kretzmer164,165, Markus Kreuz467, Savitri Krishnamurthy99,468, Dieter Kube469, Kiran Kumar8, Pardeep Kumar221, Sushant Kumar5,19, Yogesh Kumar64, Ritika Kundra114,121, Kirsten Kübler8,14,72, Ralf Küppers470, Jesper Lagergren383,471, Phillip H. Lai166, Peter W. Laird472, Sunil R. Lakhani473, Christopher M. Lalansingh6, Emilie Lalonde6, Fabien C. Lamaze6, Adam Lambert351, Eric Lander8, Pablo Landgraf474,475, Luca Landoni115, Anita Langerød130, Andrés Lanzós230,231,423, Denis Larsimont476, Erik Larsson477, Mark Lathrop189, Loretta M. S. Lau478, Chris Lawerenz55, Rita T. Lawlor177, Michael S. Lawrence8,72,183, Alexander J. Lazar99,108, Xuan Le479, Darlene Lee30, Donghoon Lee5, Eunjung Alice Lee480, Hee Jin Lee417, Jake June-Koo Lee264,266, Jeong-Yeon Lee481, Juhee Lee482, Ming Ta Michael Lee340, Henry Lee-Six49, Kjong-Van Lehmann276,277,278,279,430, Hans Lehrach483, Dido Lenze400, Conrad R. Leonard209,311, Daniel A. Leongamornlert49,178, Ignaty Leshchiner8, Louis Letourneau484, Ivica Letunic71, Douglas A. Levine88,485, Lora Lewis12, Tim Ley486, Chang Li56,396, Constance H. Li6,44, Haiyan Irene Li30, Jun Li21, Lin Li56, Shantao Li5, Siliang Li56,396, Xiaobo Li56,396, Xiaotong Li5, Xinyue Li56, Yilong Li49, Han Liang21, Sheng-Ben Liang234, Peter Lichter68,397, Pei Lin8, Ziao Lin8,487, W. M. Linehan488, Ole Christian Lingjærde489, Dongbing Liu56,396, Eric Minwei Liu88,301,302, Fei-Fei Liu201,490, Fenglin Liu381,491, Jia Liu492, Xingmin Liu56,396, Julie Livingstone6, Dimitri Livitz8, Naomi Livni221, Lucas Lochovsky5,19,110, Markus Loeffler467, Georgina V. Long211, Armando Lopez-Guillermo493, Shaoke Lou5,19, David N. Louis72, Laurence B. Lovat117, Yiling Lu38, Yong-Jie Lu162,494, Youyong Lu495,496,497, Claudio Luchini167, Ilinca Lungu144,148, Xuemei Luo152, Hayley J. Luxton117, Andy G. Lynch223,315,498, Lisa Lype36, Cristina López111,112, Carlos López-Otín499, Eric Z. Ma64, Yussanne Ma30, Gaetan MacGrogan500, Shona MacRae501, Geoff Macintyre223, Tobias Madsen73, Kazuhiro Maejima184, Andrea Mafficini177, Dennis T. Maglinte166,502, Arindam Maitra174, Partha P. Majumder174, Luca Malcovati232, Salem Malikic62,78, Giuseppe Malleo115, Graham J. Mann211,246,503, Luisa Mantovani-Löffler504, Kathleen Marchal505,506, Giovanni Marchegiani115, Elaine R. Mardis1,193,507, Adam A. Margolin31, Maximillian G. Marin37, Florian Markowetz223,315, Julia Markowski403, Jeffrey Marks508, Tomas Marques-Bonet61,81,386,509, Marco A. Marra30, Luke Marsden351, John W. M. Martens332, Sancha Martin49,510, Jose I. Martin-Subero81,511, Iñigo Martincorena49, Alexander Martinez-Fundichely301,302,451 Yosef E. Maruvka8,26,72, R. Jay Mashl1,2, Charlie E. Massie223, Thomas J. Matthew37, Lucy Matthews178, Erik Mayer221,512, Simon Mayes513, Michael Mayo30, Faridah Mbabaali272, Karen McCune514, Ultan McDermott49, Patrick D. McGillivray19, Michael D. McLellan1,3,20, John D. McPherson148,272,515, John R. McPherson179,180, Treasa A. McPherson260, Samuel R. Meier8, Alice Meng516, Shaowu Meng134, Andrew Menzies49, Neil D. Merrett115,517, Sue Merson178, Matthew Meyerson8,14,82, William U. Meyerson4,5, Piotr A. Mieczkowski518, George L. Mihaiescu76, Sanja Mijalkovic284, Ana Mijalkovic Mijalkovic-Lazic284, Tom Mikkelsen519, Michele Milella253, Linda Mileshkin103, Christopher A. Miller1 , David K. Miller113,170, Jessica K. Miller272, Gordon B. Mills33,34, Ana Milovanovic57, Sarah Minner520, Marco Miotto115, Gisela Mir Arnau267, Lisa Mirabello240, Chris Mitchell103, Thomas J. Mitchell49,315,352, Satoru Miyano375, Naoki Miyoshi375, Shinichi Mizuno521, Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor522, Malcolm J. Moore300, Richard A. Moore30, Sandro Morganella49, Quaid D. Morris127,490, Carl Morrison523,524, Lisle E. Mose134, Catherine D. Moser349, Ferran Muiños298,299, Loris Mularoni298,299, Andrew J. Mungall30, Karen Mungall30, Elizabeth A. Musgrove133, Ville Mustonen525,526,527, David Mutch528, Francesc Muyas52,53,74, Donna M. Muzny12, Alfonso Muñoz59, Jerome Myers529, Ola Myklebost461, Peter Möller530, Genta Nagae89, Adnan M. Nagrial170, Hardeep K. Nahal-Bose76, Hitoshi Nakagama531, Hidewaki Nakagawa184, Hiromi Nakamura118, Toru Nakamura388, Kaoru Nakano184, Tannistha Nandi532, Jyoti Nangalia49, Mia Nastic284, Arcadi Navarro61,81,386, Fabio C. P. Navarro19, David E. Neal223,352, Gerd Nettekoven533, Felicity Newell209,311, Steven J. Newhouse59, Yulia Newton37, Alvin Wei Tian Ng534, Anthony Ng535, Jonathan Nicholson49, David Nicol221, Yongzhan Nie321,536, G. Petur Nielsen72, Morten Muhlig Nielsen73, Serena Nik-Zainal49,281,282,537, Michael S. Noble8, Katia Nones209,311, Paul A. Northcott538, Faiyaz Notta148,539, Brian D. O’Connor76,540, Peter O’Donnell541, Maria O’Donovan282, Sarah O’Meara49, Brian Patrick O’Neill542, J. Robert O’Neill543, David Ocana59, Angelica Ochoa88, Layla Oesper544, Christopher Ogden221, Hideki Ohdan93, Kazuhiro Ohi375, Lucila Ohno-Machado244, Karin A. Oien523,545, Akinyemi I. Ojesina546,547,548, Hidenori Ojima549, Takuji Okusaka550, Larsson Omberg551, Choon Kiat Ong552, Stephan Ossowski52,53,74, German Ott553, B. F. Francis Ouellette76,554, Christine P’ng6, Marta Paczkowska6, Salvatore Paiella115, Chawalit Pairojkul523, Marina Pajic170, Qiang Pan-Hammarström56,555, Elli Papaemmanuil49, Irene Papatheodorou59, Nagarajan Paramasivam43,47, Ji Wan Park385, Joong-Won Park556, Keunchil Park557,558, Kiejung Park559, Peter J. Park264,266, Joel S. Parker518, Simon L. Parsons124, Harvey Pass560, Danielle Pasternack272, Alessandro Pastore276, Ann-Marie Patch209,311, Iris Pauporté251, Antonio Pea115, John V. Pearson209,311, Chandra Sekhar Pedamallu8,14,82, Jakob Skou Pedersen73,75, Paolo Pederzoli115, Martin Peifer270, Nathan A. Pennell561, Charles M. Perou129,518, Marc D. Perry76,77, Gloria M. Petersen562, Myron Peto22, Nicholas Petrelli563, Robert Petryszak59, Stefan M. Pfister426,465,564, Mark Phillips424, Oriol Pich298,299, Hilda A. Pickett478, Todd D. Pihl565, Nischalan Pillay566, Sarah Pinder567, Mark Pinese170, Andreia V. Pinho568, Esa Pitkänen60, Xavier Pivot569, Elena Piñeiro-Yáñez95, Laura Planko533, Christoph Plass345, Paz Polak8,14,15, Tirso Pons570, Irinel Popescu571, Olga Potapova572, Aparna Prasad52, Shaun R. Preston573, Manuel Prinz47, Antonia L. Pritchard311, Stephenie D. Prokopec6, Elena Provenzano574, Xose S. Puente499, Sonia Puig176, Montserrat Puiggròs57, Sergio Pulido-Tamayo505,506, Gulietta M. Pupo246, Colin A. Purdie575, Michael C. Quinn209,311, Raquel Rabionet52,53,576, Janet S. Rader577, Bernhard Radlwimmer397, Petar Radovic284, Benjamin Raeder60, Keiran M. Raine49, Manasa Ramakrishna49, Kamna Ramakrishnan49, Suresh Ramalingam578, Benjamin J. Raphael579, W. Kimryn Rathmell580, Tobias Rausch60, Guido Reifenberger475, Jüri Reimand6,44, Jorge Reis-Filho348, Victor Reuter348, Iker Reyes-Salazar298, Matthew A. Reyna579, Sheila M. Reynolds36, Esther Rheinbay8,14,72, Yasser Riazalhosseini189, Andrea L. Richardson323, Julia Richter111,128, Matthew Ringel581, Markus Ringnér181, Yasushi Rino582, Karsten Rippe405, Jeffrey Roach583, Lewis R. Roberts349, Nicola D. Roberts49, Steven A. Roberts584, A. Gordon Robertson30, Alan J. Robertson113, Javier Bartolomé Rodriguez57, Bernardo Rodriguez-Martin104,105,106, F. Germán Rodríguez-González83,332, Michael H. A. Roehrl44,123,148,234,585,586, Marius Rohde587, Hirofumi Rokutan440, Gilles Romieu588, Ilse Rooman170, Tom Roques262, Daniel Rosebrock8, Mara Rosenberg8,72, Philip C. Rosenstiel589, Andreas Rosenwald590, Edward W. Rowe221,591, Romina Royo57, Steven G. Rozen179,180,592, Yulia Rubanova17,127, Mark A. Rubin423,593,594,595,596, Carlota Rubio-Perez298,299,597, Vasilisa A. Rudneva60, Borislav C. Rusev177, Andrea Ruzzenente598, Gunnar Rätsch276,277,278,279,280,430, Radhakrishnan Sabarinathan298,299,599, Veronica Y. Sabelnykova6, Sara Sadeghi30, S. Cenk Sahinalp62,78,79, Natalie Saini357, Mihoko Saito-Adachi440, Gordon Saksena8, Adriana Salcedo6, Roberto Salgado600, Leonidas Salichos5,19, Richard Sallari8, Charles Saller601, Roberto Salvia115, Michelle Sam272, Jaswinder S. Samra115,602, Francisco Sanchez-Vega114,121, Chris Sander276,603,604, Grant Sanders134, Rajiv Sarin605, Iman Sarrafi62,78, Aya Sasaki-Oku184, Torill Sauer489, Guido Sauter520, Robyn P. M. Saw211, Maria Scardoni167, Christopher J. Scarlett170,606, Aldo Scarpa177, Ghislaine Scelo194, Dirk Schadendorf68,607, Jacqueline E. Schein30, Markus B. Schilhabel589, Matthias Schlesner47,80, Thorsten Schlomm84,608, Heather K. Schmidt1 , Sarah-Jane Schramm246, Stefan Schreiber609, Nikolaus Schultz121, Steven E. Schumacher8,323, Roland F. Schwarz59,403,405,610, Richard A. Scolyer211,448,602, David Scott428, Ralph Scully611, Raja Seethala612, Ayellet V. Segre8,613, Iris Selander260, Colin A. Semple434, Yasin Senbabaoglu276, Subhajit Sengupta614, Elisabetta Sereni115, Stefano Serra585, Dennis C. Sgroi72, Mark Shackleton103, Nimish C. Shah352, Sagedeh Shahabi234, Catherine A. Shang329, Ping Shang211, Ofer Shapira8,323, Troy Shelton271, Ciyue Shen603,604, Hui Shen615, Rebecca Shepherd49, Ruian Shi490, Yan Shi134, Yu-Jia Shiah6, Tatsuhiro Shibata118,616, Juliann Shih8,82, Eigo Shimizu375, Kiyo Shimizu617, Seung Jun Shin618, Yuichi Shiraishi375, Tal Shmaya285, Ilya Shmulevich36, Solomon I. Shorser6, Charles Short59, Raunak Shrestha62, Suyash S. Shringarpure217, Craig Shriver619, Shimin Shuai6,126, Nikos Sidiropoulos83, Reiner Siebert112,620, Anieta M. Sieuwerts332, Lina Sieverling205,237, Sabina Signoretti202,621, Katarzyna O. Sikora177, Michele Simbolo138, Ronald Simon520, Janae V. Simons134, Jared T. Simpson6,17, Peter T. Simpson473, Samuel Singer115,458, Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong8,217, Payal Sipahimalani30, Tara J. Skelly390, Marcel Smid332, Jaclyn Smith622, Karen Smith-McCune514, Nicholas D. Socci276, Heidi J. Sofia27, Matthew G. Soloway134, Lei Song240, Anil K. Sood623,624,625, Sharmila Sothi626, Christos Sotiriou244, Cameron M. Soulette37, Paul N. Span627, Paul T. Spellman22, Nicola Sperandio177, Andrew J. Spillane211, Oliver Spiro8, Jonathan Spring628, Johan Staaf181, Peter F. Stadler163,164,165, Peter Staib629, Stefan G. Stark277,279,618,630, Lucy Stebbings49, Ólafur Andri Stefánsson631, Oliver Stegle59,60,632, Lincoln D. Stein6,126, Alasdair Stenhouse633, Chip Stewart8, Stephan Stilgenbauer634, Miranda D. Stobbe52,61, Michael R. Stratton49, Jonathan R. Stretch211, Adam J. Struck31, Joshua M. Stuart24,37, Henk G. Stunnenberg396,635, Hong Su56,396, Xiaoping Su99, Ren X. Sun6, Stephanie Sungalee60, Hana Susak52,53, Akihiro Suzuki89,636, Fred Sweep637, Monika Szczepanowski128, Holger Sültmann67,638, Takashi Yugawa617, Angela Tam30, David Tamborero298,299, Benita Kiat Tee Tan639, Donghui Tan518, Patrick Tan180,532,592,640, Hiroko Tanaka375, Hirokazu Taniguchi616, Tomas J. Tanskanen641, Maxime Tarabichi49,290, Roy Tarnuzzer220, Patrick Tarpey642, Morgan L. Taschuk152, Kenji Tatsuno89, Simon Tavaré223,643, Darrin F. Taylor113, Amaro Taylor-Weiner8, Jon W. Teague49, Bin Tean Teh180,592,640,644,645, Varsha Tembe246, Javier Temes104,105, Kevin Thai76, Sarah P. Thayer393, Nina Thiessen30, Gilles Thomas646, Sarah Thomas221, Alan Thompson221, Alastair M. Thompson633, John F. Thompson211, R. Houston Thompson647, Heather Thorne103, Leigh B. Thorne176, Adrian Thorogood424, Grace Tiao8, Nebojsa Tijanic284, Lee E. Timms272, Roberto Tirabosco648, Marta Tojo106, Stefania Tommasi649, Christopher W. Toon170, Umut H. Toprak48,650, David Torrents57,81, Giampaolo Tortora651,652, Jörg Tost653, Yasushi Totoki118, David Townend654, Nadia Traficante103, Isabelle Treilleux655,656, Jean-Rémi Trotta61, Lorenz H. P. Trümper469, Ming Tsao124,539, Tatsuhiko Tsunoda183,657,658,659, Jose M. C. Tubio104,105,106, Olga Tucker660, Richard Turkington661, Daniel J. Turner513, Andrew Tutt323, Masaki Ueno376, Naoto T. Ueno662, Christopher Umbricht151,213,663, Husen M. Umer305,664, Timothy J. Underwood665, Lara Urban59,60, Tomoko Urushidate616, Tetsuo Ushiku339, Liis Uusküla-Reimand666,667, Alfonso Valencia57,81, David J. Van Den Berg166, Steven Van Laere307, Peter Van Loo290,291, Erwin G. Van Meir668, Gert G. Van den Eynden307, Theodorus Van der Kwast123, Naveen Vasudev137, Miguel Vazquez57,669, Ravikiran Vedururu267, Umadevi Veluvolu518, Shankar Vembu490,670, Lieven P. C. Verbeke506,671, Peter Vermeulen307, Clare Verrill351,672, Alain Viari177, David Vicente57, Caterina Vicentini177, K. Vijay Raghavan365, Juris Viksna673, Ricardo E. Vilain674, Izar Villasante57, Anne Vincent-Salomon635, Tapio Visakorpi190, Douglas Voet8, Paresh Vyas311,351, Ignacio Vázquez-García49,86,675,676, Nick M. Waddell209, Nicola Waddell209,311, Claes Wadelius677, Lina Wadi6, Rabea Wagener111,112, Jeremiah A. Wala8,14,82, Jian Wang56, Jiayin Wang1,40,66, Linghua Wang12, Qi Wang465, Wenyi Wang21, Yumeng Wang21, Zhining Wang220, Paul M. Waring523, Hans-Jörg Warnatz483, Jonathan Warrell5,19, Anne Y. Warren352,678, Sebastian M. Waszak60, David C. Wedge49,294,679, Dieter Weichenhan345, Paul Weinberger680, John N. Weinstein38, Joachim Weischenfeldt60,83,84, Daniel J. Weisenberger166, Ian Welch681, Michael C. Wendl1,10,11, Johannes Werner47,85, Justin P. Whalley61,682, David A. Wheeler12,13, Hayley C. Whitaker117, Dennis Wigle683, Matthew D. Wilkerson518, Ashley Williams244, James S. Wilmott211, Gavin W. Wilson6,148, Julie M. Wilson148, Richard K. Wilson1,684, Boris Winterhoff685, Jeffrey A. Wintersinger17,127,384, Maciej Wiznerowicz686,687, Stephan Wolf688, Bernice H. Wong689, Tina Wong1,30, Winghing Wong690, Youngchoon Woo250, Scott Wood209,311, Bradly G. Wouters44, Adam J. Wright6, Derek W. Wright133,691, Mark H. Wright217, Chin-Lee Wu72, Dai-Ying Wu285, Guanming Wu692, Jianmin Wu170, Kui Wu56,396, Yang Wu179,180, Zhenggang Wu64, Liu Xi12, Tian Xia693, Qian Xiang76, Xiao Xiao66, Rui Xing497, Heng Xiong56,396, Qinying Xu209,311, Yanxun Xu694, Hong Xue64, Shinichi Yachida118,695, Sergei Yakneen60, Rui Yamaguchi375, Takafumi N. Yamaguchi6, Masakazu Yamamoto120, Shogo Yamamoto89, Hiroki Yamaue376, Fan Yang490, Huanming Yang56, Jean Y. Yang696, Liming Yang220, Lixing Yang697, Shanlin Yang306, Tsun-Po Yang270, Yang Yang369, Xiaotong Yao408,698, Marie-Laure Yaspo483, Lucy Yates49, Christina Yau156, Chen Ye56,396, Kai Ye40,41, Venkata D. Yellapantula20,86, Christopher J. Yoon249, Sung-Soo Yoon463, Fouad Yousif6, Jun Yu699, Kaixian Yu700, Willie Yu701, Yingyan Yu702, Ke Yuan223,510,703, Yuan Yuan21, Denis Yuen6, Takashi Yugawa617, Christina K. Yung76, Olga Zaikova704, Jorge Zamora49,104,105,106, Marc Zapatka397, Jean C. Zenklusen220, Thorsten Zenz67, Nikolajs Zeps705,706, Cheng-Zhong Zhang8,707, Fan Zhang381, Hailei Zhang8, Hongwei Zhang494, Hongxin Zhang121, Jiashan Zhang220, Jing Zhang5, Junjun Zhang76, Xiuqing Zhang56, Xuanping Zhang66,369, Yan Zhang5,708,709, Zemin Zhang381,710, Zhongming Zhao711, Liangtao Zheng381, Xiuqing Zheng381, Wanding Zhou615, Yong Zhou56, Bin Zhu240, Hongtu Zhu700,712, Jingchun Zhu24, Shida Zhu56,396, Lihua Zou713, Xueqing Zou49, Anna deFazio246,247,714, Nicholas van As221, Carolien H. M. van Deurzen715, Marc J. van de Vijver523, L. van’t Veer716 & Christian von Mering433,717, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts.

Driven by the necessity to survive environmental pathogens, the human immune system has evolved exceptional diversity and plasticity, to which several factors contribute including inheritable structural polymorphism of the underlying genes. Characterizing this variation is challenging due to the complexity of these loci, which contain extensive regions of paralogy, segmental duplication and high copy-number repeats, but recent progress in long-read sequencing and optical mapping techniques suggests this problem may now be tractable. Here we assess this by using long-read sequencing platforms from PacBio and Oxford Nanopore, supplemented with short-read sequencing and Bionano optical mapping, to sequence DNA extracted from CD14+ monocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a single European individual identified as HV31. We use this data to build a de novo assembly of eight genomic regions encoding four key components of the immune system, namely the human leukocyte antigen, immunoglobulins, T cell receptors, and killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors. Validation of our assembly using k-mer based and alignment approaches suggests that it has high accuracy, with estimated base-level error rates below 1 in 10 kb, although we identify a small number of remaining structural errors. We use the assembly to identify heterozygous and homozygous structural variation in comparison to GRCh38. Despite analyzing only a single individual, we find multiple large structural variants affecting core genes at all three immunoglobulin regions and at two of the three T cell receptor regions. Several of these variants are not accurately callable using current algorithms, implying that further methodological improvements are needed. Our results demonstrate that assessing haplotype variation in these regions is possible given sufficiently accurate long-read and associated data. Continued reductions in the cost of these technologies will enable application of these methods to larger samples and provide a broader catalogue of germline structural variation at these loci, an important step toward making these regions accessible to large-scale genetic association studies., Author summary The human immune system is incredibly versatile underlying its capacity to defend the body against thousands of pathogens. At a molecular level, it recognizes pathogens using large libraries of antibodies and related protein receptors. These molecules are encoded by gene families that are particularly difficult to analyze due to their unusually complex patterns of similarities and differences between genes and individuals. To overcome this, we applied several sequencing methods to DNA from a single individual and developed methods to reconstruct the underlying sequence at eight of the immune-associated regions. Importantly, we used DNA extracted from monocytes to avoid capturing the further rearrangements that occur in active immune cells. We generated accurate assemblies by integrating multiple complementary data types, although we noted a small subset of locations that remain challenging. Moreover, we found that this individual contains multiple structural differences between the two inherited chromosomes and compared to previously analyzed genomes, affecting the copy number of immune system genes. Application of these methods in larger numbers of individuals will clearly uncover much more variation than is currently known, and might lead to new understanding of the effect of genetic variation on the broad range of human diseases determined by the immune response.

The sheer size of the human genome makes it improbable that identical somatic mutations at the exact same position are observed in multiple tumours solely by chance. The scarcity of cancer driver mutations also precludes positive selection as the sole explanation. Therefore, recurrent mutations may be highly informative of characteristics of mutational processes. To explore the potential, we use recurrence as a starting point to cluster >2,500 whole genomes of a pan-cancer cohort. We describe each genome with 13 recurrence-based and 29 general mutational features. Using principal component analysis we reduce the dimensionality and create independent features. We apply hierarchical clustering to the first 18 principal components followed by k-means clustering. We show that the resulting 16 clusters capture clinically relevant cancer phenotypes. High levels of recurrent substitutions separate the clusters that we link to UV-light exposure and deregulated activity of POLE from the one representing defective mismatch repair, which shows high levels of recurrent insertions/deletions. Recurrence of both mutation types characterizes cancer genomes with somatic hypermutation of immunoglobulin genes and the cluster of genomes exposed to gastric acid. Low levels of recurrence are observed for the cluster where tobacco-smoke exposure induces mutagenesis and the one linked to increased activity of cytidine deaminases. Notably, the majority of substitutions are recurrent in a single tumour type, while recurrent insertions/deletions point to shared processes between tumour types. Recurrence also reveals susceptible sequence motifs, including TT[C>A]TTT and AAC[T>G]T for the POLE and ‘gastric-acid exposure’ clusters, respectively. Moreover, we refine knowledge of mutagenesis, including increased C/G deletion levels in general for lung tumours and specifically in midsize homopolymer sequence contexts for microsatellite instable tumours. Our findings are an important step towards the development of a generic cancer diagnostic test for clinical practice based on whole-genome sequencing that could replace multiple diagnostics currently in use., Author summary Mutations found in the DNA of a tumour are expected to be largely unique to each tumour as there are three billion places in the DNA that can be mutated. However, despite these odds, in a cancer study with 2,583 participants covering 37 tumour types we observe in total over a million non-unique mutations. Based on this observation, we hypothesize that these mutations can be highly informative of the biological processes that caused them. Using characteristics of these non-unique mutations and general statistics like the total number of mutations, we classify the tumours into 16 groups. These groups not only delineate various mutational processes, but also characterize them in more detail. Moreover, we can link the groups to several clinically actionable phenotypes. Our work is a crucial step towards the development of a generic and personalized cancer diagnostic test that only uses the mutations found in the tumour.

Working with cancer whole genomes sequenced over a period of many years in different sequencing centres requires a validated framework to compare the quality of these sequences. The Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), a project a cohort of over 2800 donors provided us with the challenge of assessing the quality of the genome sequences. A non-redundant set of five quality control (QC) measurements were assembled and used to establish a star rating system. These QC measures reflect known differences in sequencing protocol and provide a guide to downstream analyses of these whole genome sequences. The resulting QC measures also allowed for exclusion samples of poor quality, providing researchers within PCAWG, and when the data is released for other researchers, a good idea of the sequencing quality. For a researcher wishing to apply the QC measures for their data we provide a Docker Container of the software used to calculate them. We believe that this is an effective framework of quality measures for whole genome, cancer sequences, which will be a useful addition to analytical pipelines, as it has to the PCAWG project.