Computational Analysis of DNA and RNA Sequencing Data Obtained from Liquid Biopsies

Next-generation sequencing of DNA and RNA obtained from liquid biopsiesof cancer patients may reveal important insights into disease progression and metastasis formation, and it holds the promise to enable new methods for noninvasive screening and clinical decision support. However, implementing liquid biopsysequencing protocols is challenged by capturing circulating tumor cellsor cell-free tumor DNA from blood samples, by amplifying genomic DNA and RNA in a reliable and unbiased manner, and by extracting biologically meaningful signals from the noisy sequencing data. In this chapter, we discuss computational methods for the analysis of DNA and RNA sequencing data obtained from liquid biopsies, addressing these challenges.