Evaluation of in silico predictors on short nucleotide variants in HBA1 , HBA2 and HBB associated with haemoglobinopathies.
Stella TamanaMaria XenophontosAnna MinaidouCoralea StephanouCornelis L HarteveldCeleste BentoJoanne Traeger-SynodinosIrene FylaktouNorafiza Mohd YasinFaidatul Syazlin Abdul HamidEzalia EsaHashim Halim-FikriBin Alwi ZilfalilAndrea C Kakourinull nullMarina KleanthousPetros KountourisPublished in: eLife (2022)
Haemoglobinopathies are the commonest monogenic diseases worldwide and are caused by variants in the globin gene clusters. With over 2400 variants detected to date, their interpretation using the ACMG/AMP guidelines is challenging and computational evidence can provide valuable input about their functional annotation. While many in silico predictors have already been developed, their performance varies for different genes and diseases. In this study, we evaluate 31 in silico predictors using a dataset of 1627 variants in HBA1 , HBA2, and HBB . By varying the decision threshold for each tool, we analyse their performance (a) as binary classifiers of pathogenicity, and (b) by using different non-overlapping pathogenic and benign thresholds for their optimal use in the ACMG/AMP framework. Our results show that CADD, Eigen-PC, and REVEL are the overall top performers, with the former reaching moderate strength level for pathogenic prediction. Eigen-PC and REVEL achieve the highest accuracies for missense variants, while CADD is also a reliable predictor of non-missense variants. Moreover, SpliceAI is the top performing splicing predictor, reaching strong level of evidence, while GERP++ and phyloP are the most accurate conservation tools. This study provides evidence about the optimal use of computational tools in globin gene clusters under the ACMG/AMP framework.