Haplosaurus computes protein haplotypes for use in precision drug design

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06542-1
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02T12:36:01Z
• Authors: William Spooner; William McLaren; Timothy Slidel; Donna K. Finch; Robin Butler; Jamie Campbell; Laura Eghobamien; David Rider; Christine Mione K...; Matthew J. Robinson; Colin Hardman; Fiona Cunningham; Tristan Vaughan; Paul Flicek; Catherine Chailla...
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 570; Proteome; Genome, Human; Science; Q; 610; Computational Biology; Proteins; Reproducibility of Results; Genomics; Article; 03 medical and health sciences; Haplotypes; Drug Design; Computer-Aided Design; Humans; Precision Medicine; Software

AbstractSelecting the most appropriate protein sequences is critical for precision drug design. Here we describe Haplosaurus, a bioinformatic tool for computation of protein haplotypes. Haplosaurus computes protein haplotypes from pre-existing chromosomally-phased genomic variation data. Integration into the Ensembl resource provides rapid and detailed protein haplotypes retrieval. Using Haplosaurus, we build a database of unique protein haplotypes from the 1000 Genomes dataset reflecting real-world protein sequence variability and their prevalence. For one in seven genes, their most common protein haplotype differs from the reference sequence and a similar number differs on their most common haplotype between human populations. Three case studies show how knowledge of the range of commonly encountered protein forms predicted in populations leads to insights into therapeutic efficacy. Haplosaurus and its associated database is expected to find broad applications in many disciplines using protein sequences and particularly impactful for therapeutics design.