Comment on "Evidence of Abundant and Purifying Selection in Humans for Recently Acquired Regulatory Functions"

TL;DR

This paper critiques a study on human genomic regulatory regions, arguing that their statistical methods and estimates of constraint are biased and lack proper rationale.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis of previous methods, highlighting biases and the need for more rigorous statistical justification in estimating genomic constraint.

Findings

Highlights biases in previous estimates of constrained regions

Points out lack of statistical rationale in highlighted examples

Emphasizes importance of rigorous methods in genomic constraint estimation

Abstract

Ward and Kellis (Reports, September 5 2012) identify regulatory regions in the human genome exhibiting lineage-specific constraint and estimate the extent of purifying selection. There is no statistical rationale for the examples they highlight, and their estimates of the fraction of the genome under constraint are biased by arbitrary designations of completely constrained regions.