Multi-channel protein voxelization to predict variant pathogenicity using deep convolutional neural networks

Abstract

A system includes at least a voxelizer, an alternative allele encoder, an evolutionary conservation encoder, and a convolutional neural network. The voxelizer accesses a three-dimensional structure of a reference amino acid sequence of a protein and fits a three-dimensional grid of voxels on atoms in the three-dimensional structure on an amino acid-basis to generate amino acid-wise distance channels. The alternative allele encoder encodes an alternative allele sequence to each voxel in the three-dimensional grid of voxels. The evolutionary conservation encoder encodes an evolutionary conservation sequence to each voxel in the three-dimensional grid of voxels. The convolutional neural network applies three-dimensional convolutions to a tensor that includes the amino acid-wise distance channels encoded with the alternative allele sequence and respective evolutionary conservation sequences and determines a pathogenicity of a variant nucleotide based at least in part on the tensor.