WASP: allele-specific software for robust discovery of molecular quantitative trait loci

Abstract

Allele-specific sequencing reads provide a powerful signal for identifying molecular quantitative trait loci (QTLs), however they are challenging to analyze and prone to technical artefacts. Here we describe WASP, a suite of tools for unbiased allele-specific read mapping and discovery of molecular QTLs. Using simulated reads, RNA-seq reads and ChIP-seq reads, we demonstrate that our approach has a low error rate and is far more powerful than existing QTL mapping approaches.