Diversity of Human Copy Number Variation and Multicopy Genes

Copy number variants (CNVs) affect both disease and normal phenotypic variation but those lying within heavily duplicated, highly identical sequence have been difficult to assay. By analyzing short-read mapping depth for 159 human genomes, we demonstrate accurate estimation of absolute copy number for duplications as small as 1.9 kbp, ranging from 0-48 copies. We identified 4.1 million ‘singly unique nucleotide’ (SUN) positions informative in distinguishing specific copies, and use them to genotype the copy and content of specific paralogs within highly duplicated gene families. These data identify human-specific expansions in genes associated with brain development, reveal extensive population genetic diversity, and detect signatures consistent with gene conversion in the human species. Our approach makes ~1000 genes accessible to genetic studies of disease association. This dataset complements the results from short read sequencing by performing validation on five individuals. We analyzed the 17q21.1 locus in 5 HapMap individuals by array CGH on a custom Agilent 4-plex 310k array performing 1 experiment for each sample. This array was targeted at high density (1 probe/105bp) to 7 genomic loci, including 17q21. The reference individual used was NA19240.