CNAPE: A Machine Learning Method for Copy Number Alteration Prediction from Gene Expression

Copy number alteration (CNA), the abnormal number of copies of genomic regions, plays a key role in cancer initiation and progression. Current high-throughput CNA detection methods, including DNA arrays and genomic sequencing, are relatively expensive and require DNA samples at a microgram level, which are not achievable in certain occasions such as clinical biopsies or single-cell genomes. Here we proposed an alternative method--CNAPE to computationally infer CNA using gene expression data. A prior knowledge-aided machine learning model was proposed, trained and tested on the transcriptomic profiles with matched CNA data of 9,740 cancers from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Using brain tumors as a proof-of-concept study, CNAPE achieved over 90% accuracy in the prediction of arm-level CNAs. Prediction performance for 12 gene-level CNAs (commonly altered genes in glioma) was also evaluated, and CNAPE achieved reasonable accuracy. CNAPE is developed as an easy-to-use tool at http://wang-lab.ust.hk/software/Software.html.