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Single-Cell Indel Detection Enhances Genetic Ancestry and Cellular Lineage Analysis

Preprint Created on 08 Sep 2026 bioRxiv

Small insertions and deletions (Indels) provide critical information for cancer genomics and clonal evolution, yet their detection from single-cell sequencing (SCS) such as scRNA-seq and scATAC-seq remains challenging due to sparse coverage, alignment artifacts, and RNA editing. Here, we present Monopogen-Indel, a bioinformatics framework for accurate germline and somatic Indel detection through haplotype-aware variant calling, dynamic template matching in repetitive regions, and cell-population- based allele segregation analysis. We validated germline Indel detection in human retina snRNA-seq with matched bulk whole genome sequencing (WGS). Monopogen-Indel detected 41,000-45,000 germline Indels per sample, with >70% precision and >90% genotyping accuracy. Using 65 heart left ventricle snATAC-seq samples, indel-based global ancestry inference segregated genetic ancestry comparably to SNVs, establishing indels as an independent marker of genetic diversity in SCS. In scRNA-seq from 43,717 cells across four anatomic sites of a patient with high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC), Monopogen- Indel identified ~50,000 germline Indels per sample at 86% WGS-validated precision and an average of 1,040 de novo Indels per sample. Approximately 50% of de novo Indels reflected biological sources, including variants WGS variants, RNA editing, and cell-type-specific patterns. Somatic SNVs were correctly restricted to CD45- cells, indicating high specificity in delineating somatic from germline variants. In summary, Monopogen-indel is the first framework dedicated to indel detection from SCS and expands the utility of existing single-cell data for population genetics and cancer evolution. The module is integrated into Monopogen repository https://github.com/KChen-lab/Monopogen.

Wang, Z., Chen, K., Dou, J.

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