MOTIVATION: Repetitive sequences account for approximately half of the human genome. Accurately ascertaining sequences in these regions with next generation sequencers is challenging, and requires a different set of analytical techniques than for reads originating from unique sequences. Complicating the matter are repetitive regions subject to programmed rearrangements, as is the case with the antigen-binding domains in the Immunoglobulin (Ig) and T-cell receptor (TCR) loci. RESULTS: We developed a probability-based score and visualization method to aid in distinguishing true structural variants from alignment artifacts. We demonstrate the usefulness of this method in its ability to separate real structural variants from false positives generated with existing upstream analysis tools. We validated our approach using both target-capture and whole-genome experiments. Capture sequencing reads were generated from primary lymphoid tumors, cancer cell lines and an EBV-transformed lymphoblast cell line over the Ig and TCR loci. Whole-genome sequencing reads were from a lymphoblastoid cell-line. AVAILABILITY: We implement our method as an R package available at https://github.com/Eitan177/targetSeqView. Code to reproduce the figures and results are also available.

MOTIVATION: Changes in the copy number of chromosomal DNA segments [copy number variants (CNVs)] have been implicated in human variation, heritable diseases and cancers. Microarray-based platforms are the current established technology of choice for studies reporting these discoveries and constitute the benchmark against which emergent sequence-based approaches will be evaluated. Research that depends on CNV analysis is rapidly increasing, and systematic platform assessments that distinguish strengths and weaknesses are needed to guide informed choice. RESULTS: We evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of six platforms, provided by four leading vendors, using a spike-in experiment. NimbleGen and Agilent platforms outperformed Illumina and Affymetrix in accuracy and precision of copy number dosage estimates. However, Illumina and Affymetrix algorithms that leverage single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information make up for this disadvantage and perform well at variant detection. Overall, the NimbleGen 2.1M platform outperformed others, but only with the use of an alternative data analysis pipeline to the one offered by the manufacturer. AVAILABILITY: The data is available from http://rafalab.jhsph.edu/cnvcomp/. CONTACT: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.