Deep mutational scanning is a widely used method for multiplex measurement of functional consequences of protein variants. We developed a new deep mutational scanning statistical model that generates error estimates for each measurement, capturing both sampling error and consistency between replicates. We apply our model to one novel and five published datasets comprising 243,732 variants and demonstrate its superiority in removing noisy variants and conducting hypothesis testing. Simulations show our model applies to scans based on cell growth or binding and handles common experimental errors. We implemented our model in Enrich2, software that can empower researchers analyzing deep mutational scanning data.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13059-017-1272-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Measuring the functional consequences of protein variants can reveal how a protein works or help unlock the meaning of an individual's genome. Deep mutational scanning is a widely used method for multiplex measurement of the functional consequences of protein variants. A major limitation of this method has been the lack of a common analysis framework. We developed a statistical model for estimating variant scores that can be applied to many experimental designs. Our method generates an error estimate for each score that captures both sampling error and consistency between replicates. We apply our model to one novel and five published datasets comprising 243,732 variants and demonstrate its superiority, particularly for removing noisy variants, detecting variants of small effect, and conducting hypothesis testing. We implemented our model in easy--to--use software, Enrich2, that can empower researchers analyzing deep mutational scanning data.

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