MutationDistiller: user-driven identification of pathogenic DNA variants

Abstract

MutationDistiller is a freely available online tool for user-driven analyses of Whole Exome Sequencing data. It offers a user-friendly interface aimed at clinicians and researchers, who are not necessarily bioinformaticians. MutationDistiller combines MutationTaster's pathogenicity predictions with a phenotype-based approach. Phenotypic information is not limited to symptoms included in the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO), but may also comprise clinical diagnoses and the suspected mode of inheritance. The search can be restricted to lists of candidate genes (e.g. virtual gene panels) and by tissue-specific gene expression. The inclusion of GeneOntology (GO) and metabolic pathways facilitates the discovery of hitherto unknown disease genes. In a novel approach, we trained MutationDistiller's HPO-based prioritization on authentic genotype-phenotype sets obtained from ClinVar and found it to match or outcompete current prioritization tools in terms of accuracy. In the output, the program provides a list of potential disease mutations ordered by the likelihood of the affected genes to cause the phenotype. MutationDistiller provides links to gene-related information from various resources. It has been extensively tested by clinicians and their suggestions have been valued in many iterative cycles of revisions. The tool, a comprehensive documentation and examples are freely available at https://www.mutationdistiller.org/.