T2T-CHM13 improves read mapping and detection of clinically relevant genetic variation in the Swedish population

Abstract

The T2T-CHM13 reference genome, released in March 2022, fills in the 8% of the human genome that were not resolved in GRCh38 and reconstructs large parts of the known genome. The more accurate and complete reference genome is expected to improve the quality of read mapping and variant calling. Even though whole genome sequencing (WGS)-based approaches have become the golden standard in medical genetics, the extent of these benefits still remains unclear. In this study, we aim to evaluate mapping quality and variant call performance with T2T-CHM13 as a reference using a cross-sectional Swedish cohort (SweGen) comprising 1000 individuals with short-read Illumina WGS data available. Remapping and variant calling was performed using the nf-core/sarek pipeline. T2T-CHM13 improved a wide range of mapping and variant calling related metrics, including a higher fraction of properly paired reads, lower mismatch rate, and more uniform coverage of coding regions. Moreover, the fraction of ambiguous alignments was higher, reflecting segmental duplications that were incorrectly collapsed in GRCh37 and GRCh38. In comparison to GRCh38, we identified 10 million additional variants in the cohort, including 5.5 million singletons, and observed an increased sensitivity for rare variants. SnpEff assigned impact ratings of moderate or high to 13% more variants in T2T-CHM13 than GRCh38. In summary, we conclude that T2T-CHM13 improves alignment metrics with higher mapping quality, better variant calling performance and confidence, including for rare and deleterious variants. The T2T-CHM13 genome reference thus facilitates enhanced discovery of new disease-causing variation, benefiting, for example, rare-disease diagnostics.