Calculating absolute copy numbers in cancer genome sequences identifies disease-associated genes and provides insights into tumor evolution and heterogeneity. Cancer genomes may contain a wide array of aberrations-point mutations, small insertions and deletions, genomic rearrangements and viral-genome insertions-all of which can be detected by deep sequencing of tumor samples. However, we are only just beginning to understand how to use such data to study the processes underlying oncogenesis.

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... a recent paper in Nature Biotechnology, Carter et al. 1 show that quantifying copy number changes