Tutorial

Probabilistic 20/20 consists of two broad statistical tests (oncogene-like and tsg-like) and somatic mutation simulation framework. Internally, the simulation framework is used to establish statistical significance in the hypothesis test through the probabilistic2020 command. However, the simulation framework through the mut_annotate command can also be used to create a simulated MAF file where aferwords all mutations are distributed like passengers based on uniform null distribution. Moreover, a set of mutational features for each gene representative of driver genes (used in 20/20+) can also be created.

Input formats

Mutations

Mutations are provided in a Mutation Annotation Format (MAF) file. Columns can be in any order, and only a few columns in the MAF file are needed. The following is a list of the required columns.

  • Hugo_Symbol (or named “Gene”)
  • Chromosome
  • Start_Position
  • End_Position
  • Reference_Allele
  • Tumor_Seq_Allele2 (or named “Tumor_Allele”)
  • Tumor_Sample_Barcode (or named “Tumor_Sample”)
  • Variant_Classification

The remaining columns in the MAF specification can be left empty or not included. Since a MAF file has many additional annotation columns, removing additional columns will reduce the memory usage of probabilistic2020.

Only coding variants found in the Variant_Classification column will be used, which includes the following: ‘Missense_Mutation’, ‘Silent’, ‘Nonsense_Mutation’, ‘Splice_Site’, ‘Nonstop_Mutation’, ‘Translation_Start_Site’, ‘Frame_Shift_Ins’, ‘Frame_Shift_Del’, ‘In_Frame_Ins’, ‘In_Frame_Del’, ‘Frame_Shift_Indel’, or ‘In_Frame_Indel’. Note, although ‘In_Frame_Indel’ and ‘Frame_Shift_Indel’ are not official MAF specification values, for the purpose of this program represent either and insertion or deletion. Other values for the Variant_Classification column are assumed to be non-coding, and dropped from the analysis.

Gene BED file

A single reference transcript for each gene is stored in BED12 format. Instead of using the transcript name for the name field in the BED file, the gene symbol which matches the MAF file should be used. In the example data, the longest CDS transcript from SNVBox was used.

Gene FASTA

Gene sequences are extracted from a genome FASTA file, and is a step that only needs to be done once. To do this, you need a BED file with names corresponding to genes, and a genome FASTA (e.g. hg19). You can download hg19 from here. Creating the gene sequence FASTA is then done by the extract_gene_seq script:

$ extract_gene_seq -i hg19.fa -b snvboxGenes.bed -o snvboxGenes.fa

In this case the BED file is created using SNVBox, a genome FASTA file for hg19 (hg19.fa), and the resulting coding sequences for the gene are stored in snvboxGenes.fa.

Pre-computed scores (optional)

Two pre-computed scores are used to evaluate missense pathogenicity scores and evolutionary conservation. Both are provided in the example data, matching the reference transcript annotation from SNVBox. Including the score information is useful, but optional. The pre-computed missense pathogenicity scores are from the VEST algorithm. The evolutionary conservation scores are calculated as the entropy of a specific column in the protein-translated version of UCSC’s 46-way vertebrate alignment.

Running the statistical test

The statistical tests account for gene sequence and mutational base context. Each gene is represented by a single reference transcript (above is longest CDS SNVBox transcript). By default the relevant sequence context for mutations are utilized from CHASM paper (denoted by -c 1.5 parameter). This includes some common dinucletoide contexts like CpG, and otherwise just a single base. Ultimately a multiple testing corrected q-value is reported using the Benjamini-Hochberg (BH) method.

Technical detail: Running on the obtained pan-cancer data may take several hours to run on a single core. Specifying the -p parameter to use multiple processors will speed up run time if available. Lowering the number of iterations (default: 100,000) will decrease run time, but also decrease the resolution of p-values.

Running oncogene sub-command

The oncogene sub-command examines missense position clustering (by codon) and elevated in silico pathogenicity scores (VEST). The score directory contains pre-computed values for VEST scores. The p-values will be combined using fisher’s method to report a single p-value with a BH FDR. In the below example, the command is parallelized onto 10 processors with the -p parameter. Lower this if the compute is not available.

$ probabilistic2020 oncogene \
     -i genes.fa \
     -b genes.bed \
     -s score_dir \
     -m mutations.txt \
     -c 1.5
     -p 10 \
     -o oncogene_output.txt

Where genes.fa is your gene FASTA file for your reference transcripts in genes.bed, mutations.txt is your MAF file containing mutations, score_dir is the directory containing the pre-computed VEST scores, and oncogene_output.txt is the file name to save the results.

Output format

The oncogene statistical test will output a tab-delimited file having columns for the p-values and Benjamini-Hochberg q-values:

  • “entropy”
  • “vest” (only included if score_dir provided)
  • “combined” (only included if score_dir provided)

The entropy columns evaluate missense clustering at the same codon by using a normalized missense position entropy statistic. Low values for entropy correspond to increased clustering of missense mutations. The vest columns examine whether missense mutations tend to have higher in silico pathogenicity scores for missense mutations than expected. The “combined” columns, combine the p-values from VEST scores and missense clustering using Fisher’s method.

Running tsg sub-command

The tsg sub-command evaluates for elevated proportion of inactivating point mutations to find TSG-like genes.

$ probabilistic2020 tsg \
     -i genes.fa \
     -b genes.bed \
     -m mutations.txt \
     -p 10 \
     -c 1.5 \
     -o tsg_output.txt

Where genes.fa is your gene FASTA file for your reference transcripts in genes.bed, mutations.txt is your MAF file containing mutations, and tsg_output.txt is the file name to save the results.

Output format

The tsg statistical test examines inactivating single nucleotide variants (nonsense, splice site, lost start, and lost stop). Both the p-value (“inactivating p-value”) and the Benjamini-hochberg q-value (“inactivating BH q-value”) are reported for a higher than expected fraction of inactivating mutations. Mutations which could not be placed onto the reference transcript will be indicated in the “SNVs Unmapped to Ref Tx” column.

Running hotmaps1d sub-command

The hotmaps1d sub-command evaluates particular amino acid residues for elevated cluster of missense mutations in the protein sequence.

$ probabilistic2020 hotmaps1d \
     -i genes.fa \
     -b genes.bed \
     -m mutations.txt \
     -w 3 \
     -p 10 \
     -c 1.5 \
     -o hotmaps1d_output.txt

Where genes.fa is your gene FASTA file for your reference transcripts in genes.bed, mutations.txt is your MAF file containing mutations, and hotmaps1d_output.txt is the file name to save the results. HotMAPS 1D also takes a window size for examining missense mutation clustering. In the above example, the parameter -w 3 considers 3 residues on either side of each mutated residue. A large number of mutations in this small window may indicate the mutations form a “hotspot”, and likely contain driver mutations at the mutated residue. The window size can be changed depending on the preferred granularity of the analysis.

Output format

The hotmaps1d statistical test examines the position of missense mutations in sequence. Both the p-value (“p-value”) and the Benjamini-hochberg q-value (“q-value”) are reported for a higher than expected ammount of missense mutations within a given window around a mutation. The “mutation count” column reports how many missense mutations were observed at the particular codon, and the “windowed sum” column reports how many missense mutations were observed in a sequence window encompassing the particular codon.

Simulating somatic mutations

The probabilistic2020 package also allows saving the results of underlying simulation of somatic mutations. The simulations need a set of observed mutations to create simulated mutations. Briefly, for each gene, SNVs (single nucleotide variants) are moved with uniform probability to any matching position in the gene sequence, holding the total number of SNVs fixed. A matching position was required to have the same base context (e.g. -c 1.5 = C*pG, CpG*, TpC*, G*pA, A, C, G, T) as the observed position. This method of generating a null distribution controls for the particular gene sequence, gene length and mutation base context. To simulate small insertions/deletions (indels), indels are moved to different genes according to a multinomial model where the probability is proprotional to the gene length. This can be done for both creating a simulated MAF file or simulated features calculated from the mutations.

Simulations are performed with the mut_annotate command. The –seed parameter will pass a seed to the pseudo random number generator. If you are performing several simulations for MAF files and features, then it is critical that every time the seed for each simulation match.

Simulated MAF

MAF output is designated with the –maf flag, but is a substantially reduced version then a typical MAF file because it only contains the relevant columns noted in the mutations input format section. To indicate mutations for each gene should be simulated once, the -n 1 parameter is used. If zero is supplied for this parameter, then simulations are not performed and rather the observed mutations are just annotated as a MAF file on the corresponding reference transcripts in genes.bed. The pseudo random number generator seed can be passed with the –seed argument.

$ mut_annotate \
     --maf \
     -n 1 \
     -i genes.fa \
     -b genes.bed \
     -m mutations.txt \
     -p 10 \
     -c 1.5 \
     -o maf_output.txt

Simulated Features

Simulated features which serve as input to 20/20+ can also be generated.

$ mut_annotate \
     --summary \
     -n 1 \
     -i genes.fa \
     -b genes.bed \
     -m mutations.txt \
     -p 10 \
     -c 1.5 \
     -o summary_output.txt