Estimation of correlations between copy-number variants in non-coding DNA

Allelic DNA aberrations across our genome have been associated with normal human genetic heterogeneity as well as with a number of diseases and disorders. When copy-number variations (CNVs) occur in gene-coding regions, known relationships between genes may help us understand correlations between CNVs. However, a large number of these aberrations occur in non-coding, extragenic regions and their correlations may be characterized only quantitatively, e.g., probabilistically, but not functionally. Using a signal processing approach to CNV detection, we identified distributed CNVs in short, non-coding regions across chromosomes and investigated their potential correlations. We estimated predominantly local correlations between CNVs within the same chromosome, and a small number of apparently random long-distance correlations.