In-Hee Lee1, Yufei Lin1, William Jefferson Alvarez1,2, Carles Hernandez-Ferrer1,3, Kenneth D Mandl1,4,5, Sek Won Kong6,7. 1. Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital, 401 Park Drive, Mail Stop BCH3187, LM5528.4, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. 2. Agios Pharmaceuticals, Boston, MA, USA. 3. Centre Nacional d'Anàlisi Genòmica (CNAG-CRG), Barcelona, Spain. 4. Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. 5. Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. 6. Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital, 401 Park Drive, Mail Stop BCH3187, LM5528.4, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. sekwon.kong@childrens.harvard.edu. 7. Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. sekwon.kong@childrens.harvard.edu.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Whole exome sequencing (WES) is widely adopted in clinical and research settings; however, one of the practical concerns is the potential false negatives due to incomplete breadth and depth of coverage for several exons in clinically implicated genes. In some cases, a targeted gene panel testing may be a dependable option to ascertain true negatives for genomic variants in known disease-associated genes. We developed a web-based tool to quickly gauge whether all genes of interest would be reliably covered by WES or whether targeted gene panel testing should be considered instead to minimize false negatives in candidate genes. RESULTS: WEScover is a novel web application that provides an intuitive user interface for discovering breadth and depth of coverage across population-scale WES datasets, searching either by phenotype, by targeted gene panel(s) or by gene(s). Moreover, the application shows metrics from the Genome Aggregation Database to provide gene-centric view on breadth of coverage. CONCLUSIONS: WEScover allows users to efficiently query genes and phenotypes for the coverage of associated exons by WES and recommends use of panel tests for the genes with potential incomplete coverage by WES.
BACKGROUND: Whole exome sequencing (WES) is widely adopted in clinical and research settings; however, one of the practical concerns is the potential false negatives due to incomplete breadth and depth of coverage for several exons in clinically implicated genes. In some cases, a targeted gene panel testing may be a dependable option to ascertain true negatives for genomic variants in known disease-associated genes. We developed a web-based tool to quickly gauge whether all genes of interest would be reliably covered by WES or whether targeted gene panel testing should be considered instead to minimize false negatives in candidate genes. RESULTS: WEScover is a novel web application that provides an intuitive user interface for discovering breadth and depth of coverage across population-scale WES datasets, searching either by phenotype, by targeted gene panel(s) or by gene(s). Moreover, the application shows metrics from the Genome Aggregation Database to provide gene-centric view on breadth of coverage. CONCLUSIONS: WEScover allows users to efficiently query genes and phenotypes for the coverage of associated exons by WES and recommends use of panel tests for the genes with potential incomplete coverage by WES.