A South Korean research team has built the world’s largest dataset and new browsing tools for the study of large-scale genomic rearrangements that could potentially cause cancer, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology said Monday.

Researchers led by KAIST professor Jung In-kyung and Korean Bioinformation Center professor Lee Byung-wook have collected and processed around 230 billion raw reads including 220 Hi-C samples. Based on the data, the team has completed construction of 400 different 3D architectures of human genomes.

Hi-C is a genome sequencing technique used to analyze the spatial genome organization of cells.

Lee said the dataset and browsing tools would allow fellow researchers to more precisely verify the changes in spatial genome organization of cancer cells. They would also help them understand cancer mutation and develop more efficient anticancer drugs accordingly.

The research team’s paper, titled “3DIV update for 2021: a comprehensive resource of 3D genome and 3D cancer genome,” has been published on scientific journal Nucleic Acids Research’s online website.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)