This is only a 0.01 improvement over the one-dimensional gene maximum multiplicity clustering, so gene maximum multiplicity is the primary measure generating the clusters that differentiate germline mutations from non-germline mutations.
The mean cancer maximum multiplicity for cluster 1 is considerably lower than cluster 3 (15 compared with 45), and this cluster may not have biological meaning other than a moderate degree of genetic instability.
Genes with higher gene maximum multiplicity values will cluster more tightly on the central axis.
There is a strong positive correlation between average gene maximum multiplicity values for clusters and number of causal genes per cluster (r s 8) = 0.894, Spearman's t = 17.48, p < 0.05).
The average cancer maximum multiplicity values for clusters 1, 2, and 3 are 14.5, 8.11, and 26.5, respectively.
The ranks of the average of the cancer maximum multiplicity values for clusters are significantly different via a Kruskal-Wallis test (H = 16.98, df = 2, p < 0.05).
The observed gene maximum multiplicity values for each cluster range from 1.0 to 10.3 (see Figure 3).
Given cancer maximum multiplicity derived distances, a hierarchical clustering technique is used to generate meaningful clusters.
We calculated thresholds for predicting germline genes by the cluster's average gene maximum multiplicity value divided by the maximum of these average values over the clusters.
