Analyzing Copy Number Variation in Common Cancer Groups

For my COMP 561: Computational Biology Methods and Research class, I analyzed copy number variations from common cancer groups to find the most highly variable regions on the chromosome. The data was taken from Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC). Using Manhatten distance for determining the differences in copy number, we computed a score for variability at each position for which a gene was known to be involved with a cancer group. Unfortunately, as part of our conclusion, we realized that the dataset was rather inadequate in sample size for us to sufficiently conclude which regions were highy variable.