TRIBES is a user-friendly platform for relatedness detection in genomic data.
Accurately classifying the degree of relatedness between pairs of individuals has multiple important applications, including disease gene discovery, removal of confounding relatives in genome wide association studies (GWAS) and family planning.
Value proposition
Currently no relatedness tools are available which are accurate beyond 3rd degree and combine the necessary data processing steps for accuracy and ease of use. To address this we have developed ‘TRIBES’, a user-friendly platform to accurately identify distant relatives.
TRIBES is user-friendly and flexible
TRIBES enables user-guided data pruning, phasing of genomes, IBD segment recovery, masking of artefactual IBD segments and finally relationship estimation. To facilitate ease-of-use we employ ‘Snakemake’, a workflow tool which enables flexibility and reproducibility.
TRIBES is accurate past 3rd degree
We have demonstrated in our recent studies here and here that TRIBES is accurate up to 7th degree (thats your second cousin once removed), which greatly improves on commonly used tools KING and PLINK, which are only accurate up to 3rd degree.
TRIBES enables disease locus discovery
TRIBES incorporates a masking function to exclude IBD regions which are artefactual. In our study, we show certain regions of the genome have disproportionately high amounts of shared IBD in an unrelated 1000 Genomes reference cohort. By masking these regions, TRIBES both improves the accuracy of relationship estimates and is capable of highlighting a disease locus.
Pricing
- Custom implementation
- Bespoke solutions
- Product workshops
- Managed updates
- Full support
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Application cases
- Genome-wide Association studies (GWAS). Related samples in a GWAS are confounders, TRIBES can identify related samples for removal
- Family planning. TRIBES can assist in avoidance of consanguineous unions
- Disease locus discovery. Through identification of shared IBD segments, TRIBES can substantially narrow search space for disease loci in cohorts of related samples.
Availability
TRIBES is freely available on GitHub for use on Linux, MacOS or Windows 10.
We are planning to offer TRIBES as cloud application shortly.