Rate Maps#
It is often useful to express a variable rate of some sort along the chromosome.
For example, most organisms have mutation rates and recombination rates which vary
depending on genomic position. Rates of this sort can be stored as an instance
of a RateMap, and then passed as a parameter to the relevant msprime
method. For instance, sim_ancestry() accepts a RateMap
for the recombination_rate
parameter and sim_mutations() accepts a RateMap
for the rate parameter.
A rate map is defined as a set of constant rates which apply piecewise over contiguous regions of the genome. For example, here we create a simple rate map over a 30kb genome:
rate_map = msprime.RateMap(
position=[0, 4000, 9000, 11000, 20000, 30000],
rate=[0, 0.1, 0.6, 0.2, 0.1]
)
rate_map
| left | right | mid | span | rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 4000 | 2000 | 4000 | 0 |
| 4000 | 9000 | 6500 | 5000 | 0.1 |
| 9000 | 11000 | 10000 | 2000 | 0.6 |
| 11000 | 20000 | 15500 | 9000 | 0.2 |
| 20000 | 30000 | 25000 | 10000 | 0.1 |
See the Working with RateMaps section for details on these columns. We can see how these rates vary along the genome by plotting:
Show code cell source
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 4))
plt.stairs(rate_map.rate, rate_map.position)
plt.title("Example RateMap with 5 rates, and a hotspot around position 10000")
plt.xlabel("Genome position")
plt.ylabel("Rate")
plt.xlim(0, rate_map.sequence_length)
plt.show()
Quick reference#
RateMapRepresent the varying rate of processes along the genome as a piecewise function.
Creating rate maps
RateMap.uniform()Create a RateMap with a single rate over the entire chromosome
RateMap.read_hapmap()Read in a RateMap from a file in “HapMap” format (common in recombination maps)
RateMap.slice()Create a new RateMap by slicing out a portion of an existing RateMap
Computing rates
RateMap.mean_rateThe weighted average rate
RateMap.total_massThe cumulative sum of rates over the entire map
RateMap.get_rate()Compute rate at a set of positions
RateMap.get_cumulative_mass()Compute the cumulative rate at a set of positions
Working with RateMaps#
In this section we illustrate the ways in which we can interact
with a RateMap object. Throughout we’ll use the example
map from the introduction, defined over a 30kb genome:
rate_map = msprime.RateMap(
position=[0, 4000, 9000, 11000, 20000, 30000],
rate=[0, 0.1, 0.6, 0.2, 0.1]
)
rate_map
| left | right | mid | span | rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 4000 | 2000 | 4000 | 0 |
| 4000 | 9000 | 6500 | 5000 | 0.1 |
| 9000 | 11000 | 10000 | 2000 | 0.6 |
| 11000 | 20000 | 15500 | 9000 | 0.2 |
| 20000 | 30000 | 25000 | 10000 | 0.1 |
See also
See the Creating rate maps section for different ways of
creating RateMap instances with various properties.
To create the RateMap instance we called the constructor
with two lists, position and rate. These define the
intervals along the genome and the rates in each interval. Because
we are interested in nonoverlapping contiguous intervals, we can
define all the \(n\) intervals with \(n + 1\) positions
and corresponding \(n\) rate values.
Important
All intervals are open-closed; that is, the left coordinate is inclusive and the right coordinate exclusive.
Information about each of the intervals is shown in the summary
table above, one interval per row. So, the last interval has a
left coordinate of 20000, a right coordinate of 30000,
a midpoint of 25000 (mid), has a span of 10000 base pairs
and maps to a rate of 0.1.
See also
See the Array interface for examples of how to access the columns efficiently as numpy arrays.
Mapping interface#
The easiest way to access the rate information from a rate map is via the mapping interface. We can use the Python square bracket notation to get the rate at a particular point:
print("rate at position 4500 = ", rate_map[4500])
rate at position 4500 = 0.1
See also
The RateMap.get_rate() method is a more efficient way to
compute the rate values at an array of locations along the genome.
We can also iterate over the intervals in the map, much as if it was a Python dictionary:
for midpoint, rate in rate_map.items():
print(midpoint, rate, sep="\t")
2000.0 0.0
6500.0 0.1
10000.0 0.6
15500.0 0.2
25000.0 0.1
Note that the key here is the midpoint of each interval.
Operations such as in tell us whether the a give position is
in the rate map:
print("Is position 10000 in the map?", 10000 in rate_map)
print("Is position -1 in the map?", -1 in rate_map)
Is position 10000 in the map? True
Is position -1 in the map? False
See also
See the Missing data section for information on how missing data is handled using this interface.
Array interface#
We can also access the information from the rate map using numpy arrays. This is usually the preferred option when working with rate maps, since they can be quite large.
print("interval left position :", rate_map.left)
print("interval right position:", rate_map.right)
print("interval midpoint :", rate_map.mid)
print("interval span :", rate_map.span)
print("interval rate :", rate_map.rate)
interval left position : [ 0. 4000. 9000. 11000. 20000.]
interval right position: [ 4000. 9000. 11000. 20000. 30000.]
interval midpoint : [ 2000. 6500. 10000. 15500. 25000.]
interval span : [ 4000. 5000. 2000. 9000. 10000.]
interval rate : [0. 0.1 0.6 0.2 0.1]
Please see the documentation for
left,
right,
mid,
span,
and rate for more information.
The position array is also defined, which is
equal to the left array with last element of the right
array (i.e., the sequence_length) appended to
it.
See also
See the Missing data section for information on how missing data is handled using this interface.
Todo
Give an example of how we might do something useful with these arrays, like plotting something, e.g.
Creating rate maps#
A rate map can be created by initializing an instance of the RateMap class
with a list of n+1 positions and n rates. Alternatively, uniform rate maps can be
created as described below, or rates read in from a text file. The last position of a
rate map is taken as the sequence length: it is your responsibility to ensure that this
is the same length as the simulated chromosome to which the rate is applied.
Uniform rate maps#
The most basic rate map is a uniform rate over the entire sequence. This can simply be
generated by RateMap.uniform():
msprime.RateMap.uniform(sequence_length=1e8, rate=0.5)
| left | right | mid | span | rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 100000000 | 50000000 | 100000000 | 0.5 |
Discrete coordinates#
The coordinates in RateMap.position are floating-point values,
and so are essentially continuous.
However, by default msprime places mutations and recombination breakpoints
at discrete (i.e., integer-valued) coordinates.
When applying a continuous RateMap to a discrete simulation,
msprime follows the philosophy that the rates apply to those integers that fall
within the corresponding intervals.
In other words, rate[j] will apply to all integers between position[j] (inclusive)
and position[j+1] (exclusive), i.e., to the integers ceiling(position[j]),
ceiling(position[j]) + 1, …, ceiling(position[j+1}) - 1.
Concretely, if the positions in a mutation RateMap are [0., 2.3, 6.7, 10.]
and the rates are [0., 2.1, 0.], then (in a discrete simulation),
mutations will occur only at positions 3., 4., and 5.
(at rate 2.1 each per unit time).
If the same RateMap is used for recombination, we will have breakpoints only at
3., 4., and 5.. However, recall that a recombination breakpoint indicates
the start of a new segment of genome, so that a breakpoint at 3. indicates
(in a discrete simulation) a recombination in the link between 2. and 3.,
e.g., distinct ancestries on the segments [0., 1., 2.] and [3., 4., ...].
This has the consequence that to control the rate of recombination events on the links
x:(x+1), (x+1):(x+2), … (y-1):y, one needs to set the rate
on the interval [x+1, y).
Hotspots#
For instance, if we want a recombination RateMap over a chromosome of 10,000bp
with a background rate of 1e-8,
but a “hotspot” with recombination rate of 1e-5 between positions 4999
and 5000, then we would do:
rates = msprime.RateMap(
position=[0., 5000, 5001, 10000],
rate=[1e-8, 1e-5, 1e-8]
)
(Note that, as discussed above, the position attributes need to be
one more than what one might think based on the verbal description.)
Used for a mutation rate, this would produce a hotspot of mutations
at position 4999.
Reading from a text file#
Recombination maps are commonly distributed in HapMap format,
as detailed in the documentation for RateMap.read_hapmap().
Here is a short example
(the code works as if the given text was in a file):
data = io.StringIO("""\
Chromosome Position(bp) Rate(cM/Mb) Map(cM)
chr10 48232 0.1614 0.002664
chr10 48486 0.1589 0.002705
chr10 50009 0.159 0.002947
chr10 52147 0.1574 0.003287
""")
rate_map = msprime.RateMap.read_hapmap(data)
print(rate_map)
┌───────────────────────────────────────────┐
│left │right │ mid│ span│ rate│
├───────────────────────────────────────────┤
│0 │48232 │ 24116│ 48232│ 5.5e-10│
│48232 │48486 │ 48359│ 254│ 1.6e-09│
│48486 │50009 │ 49247.5│ 1523│ 1.6e-09│
│50009 │52147 │ 51078│ 2138│ 1.6e-09│
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘
Missing data#
There are often times when we do not know what the rate of a particular process is along the genome. For example, in telomeric regions, we don’t really know what the rate of recombination is, and we need some way of encoding this information.
See also
See the Missing data section for an example of running an ancestry simulation with unknown recombination rates, and the properties of the resulting tree sequence.
Following the standard convention in Python numerical libraries, we encode missing data using NaN values. Here, for example we create a rate map in which we have a uniform rate except for the 10 base pairs at either end, which are unknown:
rate_map = msprime.RateMap(position=[0, 10, 90, 100], rate=[np.nan, 0.1, np.nan])
rate_map
| left | right | mid | span | rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 10 | 5 | 10 | nan |
| 10 | 90 | 50 | 80 | 0.1 |
| 90 | 100 | 95 | 10 | nan |
Values that we compute such as mean_rate correctly ignore
the regions of missing data:
print("mean rate = ", rate_map.mean_rate)
mean rate = 0.1
The Mapping interface and Array interface have different semantics for dealing with missing data: the mapping interface filters out intervals that are missing, whereas the array interface leaves them in.
Array interface#
The array interface in the RateMap is an efficient way of directly
accessing the underlying array data. To give the user the maximum flexibility,
the per-interval arrays like left are always defined
over both missing and non-missing intervals:
print("left = ", rate_map.left)
print("right = ", rate_map.right)
print("mid = ", rate_map.mid)
print("span = ", rate_map.span)
left = [ 0. 10. 90.]
right = [ 10. 90. 100.]
mid = [ 5. 50. 95.]
span = [10. 80. 10.]
We can use the missing and non_missing
arrays to get access to the missing and non-missing portions of the map.
These are numpy boolean arrays, which we can use to index into the other
per-interval arrays. For example, we can compare the total span of
missing and non-missing intervals:
print("Total missing span = ", np.sum(rate_map.span[rate_map.missing]))
print("Total non-missing span = ", np.sum(rate_map.span[rate_map.non_missing]))
Total missing span = 20.0
Total non-missing span = 80.0
Mapping interace#
The Mapping interface takes the opposite
approach to missing data to the Array interface: missing
intervals are automatically filtered out. Consider what we get when
we iterate over the items() in the map:
for key, value in rate_map.items():
print(f"{key} -> {value}")
50.0 -> 0.1
As far as the mapping interface is concerned, we have one interval
in this map, not three. This logic is reflected by the in operation:
we only consider a position to be “in” the map if it’s in a non-missing
interval:
print("Is position 5 in the map? ", 5 in rate_map)
print("Is position 50 in the map? ", 50 in rate_map)
Is position 5 in the map? False
Is position 50 in the map? True
An important consequence of this definition is that the len() of a
RateMap is the number of non-empty intervals:
print("len = ", len(rate_map))
print("num_intervals = ", rate_map.num_intervals)
print("num_non_missing_intervals = ", rate_map.num_non_missing_intervals)
len = 1
num_intervals = 3
num_non_missing_intervals = 1
Important
Because the len() of a RateMap is defined as the number of
non-empty intervals we recommend using the num_intervals
and num_non_missing_intervals for clarity.
Slicing#
Sometimes we are interested in running a simulation for a small portion
of a map, for example when we want to focus on a small region of a much
larger chromosome. We can do this using the
slice() method, which extracts a target region from a
given map and marks the flanking regions as missing data,
so that the original coordinate system is maintained.
Todo
Example of the slice method and slice notation on small maps so we can illustrate them.
Simulation example#
For example, if you wish to simulate a 40 kb section of human chromosome 1 from position 0.7Mb, but keep the standard chromosome 1 genomic coordinates, you could do this:
import io
# First and last sections of human chr 1 build 36 genetic map taken from
# https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/hapmap/recombination/latest/rates/
hapmap_chr1_snippet = io.StringIO("""\
chr position COMBINED_rate(cM/Mb) Genetic_Map(cM)
1 72434 0.0015000000 0
1 78032 0.0015000000 0.0000083970
1 554461 0.0015000000 0.0007230405
1 554484 0.0015000000 0.0007230750
1 555296 0.0015000000 0.0007242930
1 558185 0.0015000000 0.0007286265
1 558390 0.0010000000 0.0007289340
1 711153 1.9757156611 0.0008816970
1 713682 2.0415081787 0.0058782819
1 713754 2.1264889217 0.0060252705
1 718105 2.1260252999 0.0152776238
1 719811 2.1911540342 0.0189046230
1 728873 2.1938678585 0.0387608608
1 730720 2.1951341342 0.0428129347
1 740098 1.3377804252 0.0633989027
1 742429 0.9035885389 0.0665172688
1 743132 0.9037201735 0.0671524916 # Next 256440 lines snipped
1 247184904 0.6238867396 278.0908415443
1 247185273 0 278.0910717585""")
large_ratemap = msprime.RateMap.read_hapmap(hapmap_chr1_snippet)
sliced_ratemap = large_ratemap.slice(700e3, 740e3)
ts = msprime.sim_ancestry(10, recombination_rate=sliced_ratemap, random_seed=1)
Because the recombination rate is marked as unknown in regions below
position 700 000 and above position
740 000, msprime has not had to put effort into simulating recombination (and its
effect on ancestry) in these regions, so the simulation completes very quickly, even
though the resulting tree sequence has a sequence_length of 247 megabases.
See also
See the Missing data section for more information about how ancestry simulations with missing rate data are performed.