CRIMEtoYHU: a new web tool to develop yeast-based functional assays for characterizing cancer-associated missense variants.

Evaluation of functional impact of cancer-associated missense variants is more difficult to assess as compared to protein-truncating mutations and, consequently, standard guidelines for the interpretation of sequence variants have been recently proposed. A number of algorithms and software products were developed to predict the impact of cancer-associated missense mutations on protein structure and function. Importantly, direct assessment of the variants using high-throughput functional assays using simple genetic systems can help in speeding up the functional evaluation of newly identified cancer associated variants. We developed the web tool CRIME to YHU (CTY) to help geneticists in the evaluation of functional impact of cancer-associated missense variants. Humans and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae share thousands of protein-coding genes although they diverge for a billion year. Therefore, yeast humanization can be helpful to deciphering the functional consequences of human genetic variants found in cancer and give information for the pathogenicity of missense variants. To humanize specific positions within yeast genes, human and yeast genes have to share functional homology. If a mutation in a specific residue is associated with a particular phenotype in humans, a similar substitution in the yeast counterpart may reveal its effect at the organism level. CTY simultaneously finds yeast homologous genes, identifies the correspondent variants and determines the transferability of human variants to yeast counterparts by assigning a reliability score that may be predictive for the validity of functional assay. CTY analyzes newly identified mutations or retrieves mutations reported in the COSMIC database, provides information about the functional conservation between yeast and human and shows the mutation distribution in human genes. CTY analyzes also newly found mutations and aborts when no yeast homologous is found. Then, on the basis of the protein domain localization and functional conservation between yeast and human, the selected variants are ranked by the reliability score (RS). RS is assigned by an algorithm that computes functional data, type of mutation, chemistry of amino-acid substitution and the degree of mutation transferability between human and yeast protein. Mutations giving a positive RS are highly transferable to yeast and, therefore, yeast functional assays will be more predictable. To validate the web application, we have analyzed 8,078 cancer associated variants located in 31 genes that have yeast homologue. More than 50% of variants are transferable to yeast. Incidentally, 88% of all transferable mutations have a reliability score>0. Moreover, we analyzed by CTY, 72 functionally validated missense variants located in yeast genes at position corresponding to the human cancer-associated variants. All these variants gave positive reliability score. To further validate CTY, we analyzed 3,949 protein variants (with positive RS) by the predictive algorithm PROVEAN. This analysis shows that yeast based-functional assays will be more predictable for the variants with positive RS. We believe that CTY could be an important resource for the cancer research community by providing information concerning functional impact of specific mutations, as well as for the design of functional assays useful for decision support in precision medicine.