Quality control test for sequence-phenotype assignments

PLoS One. 2015 Feb 20;10(2):e0118288. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118288. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Relating a gene mutation to a phenotype is a common task in different disciplines such as protein biochemistry. In this endeavour, it is common to find false relationships arising from mutations introduced by cells that may be depurated using a phenotypic assay; yet, such phenotypic assays may introduce additional false relationships arising from experimental errors. Here we introduce the use of high-throughput DNA sequencers and statistical analysis aimed to identify incorrect DNA sequence-phenotype assignments and observed that 10-20% of these false assignments are expected in large screenings aimed to identify critical residues for protein function. We further show that this level of incorrect DNA sequence-phenotype assignments may significantly alter our understanding about the structure-function relationship of proteins. We have made available an implementation of our method at http://bis.ifc.unam.mx/en/software/chispas.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • DNA / analysis*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / standards
  • Internet
  • Mutagenesis
  • Phenotype
  • Proteins / chemistry
  • Proteins / genetics*
  • Proteins / metabolism
  • Quality Control
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / methods*
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / standards
  • User-Computer Interface*

Substances

  • Proteins
  • DNA

Grants and funding

This work was supported by PAPIIT (IN205911) and the Instituto de fisiologia celular from UNAM to GDR. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.