Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2/5/2025
Project Summary/Abstract The interpretation of thousands to millions of variants identified in whole exome and genome sequencing (WES/WGS), respectively, is a challenging task and requires variant frequency together with phenotype information that are not available in most public databases. The development of tools that enable data sharing of genomic data together with phenotypic features is essential for rare disease gene discovery. In 2013 we created GeneMatcher (10,574 users in 93 countries, cited in >380 publications), the first and most used web- based tool to connect individuals (researchers, clinicians, patients, etc) around the globe with interest in the same genes, variants or phenotypes. In 2019, we developed VariantMatcher (625 users in 43 countries, 428 queried variants, 61 matched variants), to share variant-level and phenotypic data from WES/WGS. To enable variant prioritization for investigators around the world, we developed PhenoDB (> 143 unique downloads of source code, 1,828 users from 65 countries). This freely available, web-based tool allows users naïve to bioinformatics to store, share, analyze and interpret patient phenotypes and sequence variants from WES/WGS. Users currently store in one instance of PhenoDB extensive phenotypic data (described with 3,646 terms mapped to HPO) from 37,712 individuals in 9,711 families with an average of 6.8 features/affected individual, describing > 2,282 diseases. Annotated WES/WGS variants are available for 7,724 individuals from 4,446 families. PhenoDB facilitates data sharing and analysis access world-wide. As of 1 December 2020, 6,151 sequenced individuals in PhenoDB were consented and submitted for phenotypic and genotypic matching through VariantMatcher. However, the ongoing development of new sequencing methods, analysis pipelines and data sharing platforms requires development of novel functions in our highly utilized resources and integration with other newly created platforms to ensure that thousands of investigators can perform state of the art analysis of genomic and phenotypic data to better interpret candidate variants. There is a critical need to maintain and improve tools that allow genomic and phenotypic data integration and sharing. To fill this need, we will leverage input from users of PhenoDB, GeneMatcher and VariantMatcher, collaborations with creators of tools and platforms with complementary functions, and our evolving expertise in sequencing analysis and gene discovery to improve our community resources. To this end, we will: 1. Implement new functions in GeneMatcher, VariantMatcher and PhenoDB to enable additional types of queries, variant filtering and prioritization pipelines. 2. Connect GeneMatcher and VariantMatcher with other, community-wide data sharing tools and integrate PhenoDB with other workflow platforms. 3. Expand our PhenoDB Genomic Education program.
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