Segmentation of Noisy Signals Generated By a Nanopore

Abstract

Nanopore-based single-molecule sequencing techniques exploit ionic current steps produced as biomolecules pass through a pore to reconstruct properties of the sequence. A key task in analyzing complex nanopore data is discovering the boundaries between these steps, which has traditionally been done in research labs by hand. We present an automated method of analyzing nanopore data, by detecting regions of ionic current corresponding to the translocation of a biomolecule, and then segmenting the region. The segmenter uses a divide-and-conquer method to recursively discover boundary points, with an implementation that works several times faster than real time and that can handle low-pass filtered signals.