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Lara Urban

Bio: Lara Urban is an academic researcher from European Bioinformatics Institute. The author has contributed to research in topics: Biology & Genome. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 20 publications receiving 1205 citations. Previous affiliations of Lara Urban include University of Würzburg & University of Otago.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
Peter J. Campbell1, Gad Getz2, Jan O. Korbel3, Joshua M. Stuart4  +1329 moreInstitutions (238)
06 Feb 2020-Nature
TL;DR: The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.
Abstract: Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale1,2,3. Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4–5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter4; identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation5,6; analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution7; describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity8,9; and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18.

1,600 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
06 Feb 2020-Nature
TL;DR: The most comprehensive catalogue of cancer-associated gene alterations to date, obtained by characterizing tumour transcriptomes from 1,188 donors of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Gome Atlas (TCGA) was presented in this article.
Abstract: Transcript alterations often result from somatic changes in cancer genomes1. Various forms of RNA alterations have been described in cancer, including overexpression2, altered splicing3 and gene fusions4; however, it is difficult to attribute these to underlying genomic changes owing to heterogeneity among patients and tumour types, and the relatively small cohorts of patients for whom samples have been analysed by both transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing. Here we present, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive catalogue of cancer-associated gene alterations to date, obtained by characterizing tumour transcriptomes from 1,188 donors of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)5. Using matched whole-genome sequencing data, we associated several categories of RNA alterations with germline and somatic DNA alterations, and identified probable genetic mechanisms. Somatic copy-number alterations were the major drivers of variations in total gene and allele-specific expression. We identified 649 associations of somatic single-nucleotide variants with gene expression in cis, of which 68.4% involved associations with flanking non-coding regions of the gene. We found 1,900 splicing alterations associated with somatic mutations, including the formation of exons within introns in proximity to Alu elements. In addition, 82% of gene fusions were associated with structural variants, including 75 of a new class, termed 'bridged' fusions, in which a third genomic location bridges two genes. We observed transcriptomic alteration signatures that differ between cancer types and have associations with variations in DNA mutational signatures. This compendium of RNA alterations in the genomic context provides a rich resource for identifying genes and mechanisms that are functionally implicated in cancer.

259 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued here that it is a quirk of history that both MRT and gene editing have come to the forefront of public attention at roughly the same time and to best protect citizens from harm, limited regulatory pathways that can be monitored and carefully delineated are preferable to shadowy practices and a potential regulatory race to the bottom.
Abstract: We argue here that it is a quirk of history that both MRT and gene editing have come to the forefront of public attention at roughly the same time. The early start on MRT in the United Kingdom enabled that country to successfully developed quite different regulatory policy approaches to the two technologies5; in contrast, the fear of germline gene editing in the United States and Canada has frozen the policy conversation on MRT. We should not let fear drive use of a sledgehammer for regulation when a scalpel will better enable us to divide the good from the bad. Although realistic about the barriers to change, we have outlined possible ways forward for both the United States and Canada that would enable progress on MRT, or possibly some limited germline gene editing without opening the floodgate. We argue that this path, and not outright prohibition, is the best way forward because citizens deserve to benefit from the advancement of science and its applications. Moreover, in our globalized world, national prohibitions cannot fully achieve their goals. As the travel of patients to Mexico for MRT performed by US doctors demonstrates (as do other examples)27,28, patients who desperately wish to access certain interventions will travel abroad to get them. Unless countries such as the United States and Canada are willing to limit the entry of children born through these technologies—were it even possible, and we are skeptical—and extend their criminal jurisdiction extraterritorially to prevent the use of these technologies, the reality is that some citizens of each country will bring germline alterations back into the country. Our view is that, to best protect citizens from harm, limited regulatory pathways that can be monitored and carefully delineated are preferable to shadowy practices and a potential regulatory race to the bottom. ❐

119 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article , the authors describe an algorithm that combines PacBio HiFi reads and Hi-C chromatin interaction data to produce a haplotype-resolved assembly without the sequencing of parents.
Abstract: Routine haplotype-resolved genome assembly from single samples remains an unresolved problem. Here we describe an algorithm that combines PacBio HiFi reads and Hi-C chromatin interaction data to produce a haplotype-resolved assembly without the sequencing of parents. Applied to human and other vertebrate samples, our algorithm consistently outperforms existing single-sample assembly pipelines and generates assemblies of similar quality to the best pedigree-based assemblies.

79 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Giulio Formenti, Kathrin Theissinger, Carlos Fernandes, Iliana Bista, Aureliano Bombarely, Christoph Bleidorn, Claudio Ciofi, Angelica Crottini, José Alberto Godoy Godoy, Jacob Höglund, Joanna Malukiewicz, Alice Mouton, Rebekah A. Oomen, Sadye Paez, Per J. Palsbøll, Christophe Pampoulie, Hannes Svardal, Constantina Theofanopoulou, Jan de Vries, Ann-Marie Waldvogel, Guojie Zhang, Camila J. Mazzoni, Miklós Bálint, Fedor Čiampor, J. Hoglund, María José Ruiz-López, Goujie Zhang, Erich D. Jarvis, Sargis A. Aghayan, Tyler Alioto, Isabel Almudi, Nadir Alvarez, Paulo C. Alves, Isabel R. Amorim, Agostinho Antunes, Paula Arribas, Petr Baldrian, Paul R. Berg, Giorgio Bertorelle, Astrid Böhne, Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati, Ljudevit Luka Boštjančić, Bastien Boussau, Catherine Breton, Elena Buzan, Paula F. Campos, Carlos Carreras, Luis Filipe Castro, Luis J. Chueca, Elena Conti, Robert Cook-Deegan, Daniel Croll, Mónica V. Cunha, Frédéric Delsuc, Alice B. Dennis, Dimitar Dimitrov, Rui Faria, Adrien Favre, Olivier Fedrigo, Rosa Fernández, Gentile Francesco Ficetola, Jean-François Flot, Toni Gabaldón, Dolores R. Galea Agius, Guido Roberto Gallo, Alice Maria Giani, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Tine Grebenc, Katerina Guschanski, Romain Guyot, Bernhard Hausdorf, Oliver Hawlitschek, Peter D. Heintzman, Berthold Heinze, Michael Hiller, Martin Husemann, Alessio Iannucci, Iker Irisarri, Kjetill S. Jakobsen, Sissel Jentoft, Peter Klinga, Agnieszka Kloch, Claudius F. Kratochwil, Henrik Kusche, Kara K S Layton, Jennifer A. Leonard, Emmanuelle Lerat, Gianni Liti, Tereza Manousaki, Tomas Marques-Bonet, Pável Matos-Maraví, Michael Matschiner, Florian Maumus, Ann M Mc Cartney, Shai Meiri, José Melo-Ferreira, Ximo Mengual, Michael T. Monaghan, Matteo Montagna, Robert W. Mysłajek, Marco T. Neiber, Violaine Nicolas, Marta Novo, Petar Ozretić, Ferran Palero, Lucian Pârvulescu, Marta Pascual, Octávio S. Paulo, Martina Pavlek, Cinta Pegueroles, Loïc Pellissier, Graziano Pesole, Craig R. Primmer, Ana Riesgo, Lukas Rüber, Diego Rubolini, Daniel Salvi, Ole Seehausen, Matthias Seidel, Simona Secomandi, Bruno Studer, Spyros Theodoridis, Marco Thines, Lara Urban, Anti Vasemägi, Adriana Vella, Noel Vella, Sonja C. Vernes, Cristiano Vernesi, David R. Vieites, Robert M. Waterhouse, Christopher W. Wheat, Gert Wörheide, Yannick Wurm, Gabrielle Zammit 
TL;DR: In this article , a large-scale generation of reference genomes representing global biodiversity is discussed. But the authors focus on the large-size generation of the reference genomes and do not discuss how to generate reference genomes for the conservation genomics.
Abstract: Progress in genome sequencing now enables the large-scale generation of reference genomes. Various international initiatives aim to generate reference genomes representing global biodiversity. These genomes provide unique insights into genomic diversity and architecture, thereby enabling comprehensive analyses of population and functional genomics, and are expected to revolutionize conservation genomics.

77 citations


Cited by
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01 Feb 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the integrative analysis of 111 reference human epigenomes generated as part of the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium, profiled for histone modification patterns, DNA accessibility, DNA methylation and RNA expression.
Abstract: The reference human genome sequence set the stage for studies of genetic variation and its association with human disease, but epigenomic studies lack a similar reference. To address this need, the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium generated the largest collection so far of human epigenomes for primary cells and tissues. Here we describe the integrative analysis of 111 reference human epigenomes generated as part of the programme, profiled for histone modification patterns, DNA accessibility, DNA methylation and RNA expression. We establish global maps of regulatory elements, define regulatory modules of coordinated activity, and their likely activators and repressors. We show that disease- and trait-associated genetic variants are enriched in tissue-specific epigenomic marks, revealing biologically relevant cell types for diverse human traits, and providing a resource for interpreting the molecular basis of human disease. Our results demonstrate the central role of epigenomic information for understanding gene regulation, cellular differentiation and human disease.

4,409 citations

01 Mar 2001
TL;DR: Using singular value decomposition in transforming genome-wide expression data from genes x arrays space to reduced diagonalized "eigengenes" x "eigenarrays" space gives a global picture of the dynamics of gene expression, in which individual genes and arrays appear to be classified into groups of similar regulation and function, or similar cellular state and biological phenotype.
Abstract: ‡We describe the use of singular value decomposition in transforming genome-wide expression data from genes 3 arrays space to reduced diagonalized ‘‘eigengenes’’ 3 ‘‘eigenarrays’’ space, where the eigengenes (or eigenarrays) are unique orthonormal superpositions of the genes (or arrays). Normalizing the data by filtering out the eigengenes (and eigenarrays) that are inferred to represent noise or experimental artifacts enables meaningful comparison of the expression of different genes across different arrays in different experiments. Sorting the data according to the eigengenes and eigenarrays gives a global picture of the dynamics of gene expression, in which individual genes and arrays appear to be classified into groups of similar regulation and function, or similar cellular state and biological phenotype, respectively. After normalization and sorting, the significant eigengenes and eigenarrays can be associated with observed genome-wide effects of regulators, or with measured samples, in which these regulators are overactive or underactive, respectively.

1,815 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Xena’s Visual Spreadsheet visualization integrates gene-centric and genomic-coordinate-centric views across multiple data modalities, providing a deep, comprehensive view of genomic events within a cohort of tumors.
Abstract: To the Editor — There is a great need for easy-to-use cancer genomics visualization tools for both large public data resources such as TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas)1 and the GDC (Genomic Data Commons)2, as well as smaller-scale datasets generated by individual labs. Commonly used interactive visualization tools are either web-based portals or desktop applications. Data portals have a dedicated back end and are a powerful means of viewing centrally hosted resource datasets (for example, Xena’s predecessor, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Cancer Browser (currently retired3), cBioPortal4, ICGC (International Cancer Genomics Consortium) Data Portal5, GDC Data Portal2). However, researchers wishing to use a data portal to explore their own data have to either redeploy the entire platform, a difficult task even for bioinformaticians, or upload private data to a server outside the user’s control, a non-starter for protected patient data, such as germline variants (for example, MAGI (Mutation Annotation and Genome Interpretation6), WebMeV7 or Ordino8). Desktop tools can view a user’s own data securely (for example, Integrated Genomics Viewer (IGV)9, Gitools10), but lack well-maintained, prebuilt files for the ever-evolving and expanding public data resources. This dichotomy between data portals and desktop tools highlights the challenge of using a single platform for both large public data and smaller-scale datasets generated by individual labs. Complicating this dichotomy is the expanding amount, and complexity, of cancer genomics data resulting from numerous technological advances, including lower-cost high-throughput sequencing and single-cell-based technologies. Cancer genomics datasets are now being generated using new assays, such as whole-genome sequencing11, DNA methylation whole-genome bisulfite sequencing12 and ATAC-seq (Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin using sequencing13). Visualizing and exploring these diverse data modalities is important but challenging, especially as many tools have traditionally specialized in only one or perhaps a few data types. And although these complex datasets generate insights individually, integration with other omics datasets is crucial to help researchers discover and validate findings. UCSC Xena was developed as a high-performance visualization and analysis tool for both large public repositories and private datasets. It was built to scale with the current and future data growth and complexity. Xena’s privacy-aware architecture enables cancer researchers of all computational backgrounds to explore large, diverse datasets. Researchers use the same system to securely explore their own data, together or separately from the public data, all the while keeping private data secure. The system easily supports many tens of thousands of samples and has been tested with up to a million cells. The simple and flexible architecture supports a variety of common and uncommon data types. Xena’s Visual Spreadsheet visualization integrates gene-centric and genomic-coordinate-centric views across multiple data modalities, providing a deep, comprehensive view of genomic events within a cohort of tumors. UCSC Xena (http://xena.ucsc.edu) has two components: the front end Xena Browser and the back end Xena Hubs (Fig. 1). The web-based Xena Browser empowers biologists to explore data across multiple Xena Hubs with a variety of visualizations and analyses. The back end Xena Hubs host genomics data from laptops, public servers, behind a firewall, or in the cloud, and can be public or private (Supplementary Fig. 1). The Xena Browser receives data simultaneously from multiple Xena Hubs and integrates them into a single coherent visualization within the browser. A private Xena Hub is a hub installed on a user’s own computer (Supplementary Fig. 2). It is configured to only respond to requests from the computer’s localhost network interface (that is, http://127.0.0.1). This ensures that the hub only communicates with the computer on which the hub is installed. A public hub is configured to respond to requests from external computers. There are two types of public Xena Hubs (Supplementary Fig. 2). The first type is an open-public hub, which is a public hub accessible by everyone. While we host several open-public hubs (Supplementary Table 1), users can also set up their own as a way to share data. An example of one is the Treehouse Hub set up by the Childhood Cancer Initiative to share pediatric cancer RNA-seq gene expression data (Supplementary Note). The second type W eb s er ve r

1,644 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Peter J. Campbell1, Gad Getz2, Jan O. Korbel3, Joshua M. Stuart4  +1329 moreInstitutions (238)
06 Feb 2020-Nature
TL;DR: The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.
Abstract: Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale1,2,3. Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4–5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter4; identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation5,6; analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution7; describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity8,9; and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18.

1,600 citations

31 Oct 2008
TL;DR: It made it possible to improve people's lives and now it prevents all forms of discrimination in the world.
Abstract: It made it possible to improve people's lives. Now it prevents all forms of discrimination in the world. It helps to improve our world.

1,521 citations