Extracts cfDNA fragmentomics features (DELFI genome-wide short/long ratios, WPS nucleosome positioning, Griffin GC-corrected accessibility profiles, end-motifs/MDS, OCF) for cancer detection and tissue-of-origin from plasma WGS. Centers on the nuclease-footprint reframe (every feature re-reads one nucleosome object), the mandatory GC correction, and the cross-protocol non-comparability that breaks naive classifiers. Runs FinaleToolkit (real CLI/Python, MIT) and the Griffin Snakemake pipeline; DELFI is a method, not a package. Use when deriving fragment-based signal from cfDNA, choosing a feature family for detection vs subtyping, or diagnosing why a fragmentomic model failed validation.
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Extracts cfDNA fragmentomics features (DELFI genome-wide short/long ratios, WPS nucleosome positioning, Griffin GC-corrected accessibility profiles, end-motifs/MDS, OCF) for cancer detection and tissue-of-origin from plasma WGS. Centers on the nuclease-footprint reframe (every feature re-reads one nucleosome object), the mandatory GC correction, and the cross-protocol non-comparability that breaks naive classifiers. Runs FinaleToolkit (real CLI/Python, MIT) and the Griffin Snakemake pipeline; DELFI is a method, not a package. Use when deriving fragment-based signal from cfDNA, choosing a feature family for detection vs subtyping, or diagnosing why a fragmentomic model failed validation.
Before using code patterns, verify installed versions match. If versions differ:
Python: pip show <package> then help(module.function) to check signatures
CLI: <tool> --version then <tool> --help to confirm flags
If code throws ImportError, AttributeError, or TypeError, introspect the installed
package and adapt the example to match the actual API rather than retrying.
Notes specific to this skill: FinaleToolkit CLI subcommands are hyphenated (frag-length-bins, end-motifs, ); the Python functions are underscored in . The filter subcommand is , NOT . Griffin is a Snakemake pipeline, not an importable function. DELFI is a methodology and a company (DELFI Diagnostics), not a -able tool.
delfi-gc-correct
finaletoolkit.frag
filter-file
filter-bam
pip install
Fragment Analysis
"Analyze cfDNA fragment patterns for cancer signal" -> Quantify nucleosome-footprint features (size ratios, protection scores, accessibility profiles, end motifs) from plasma WGS for detection or tissue-of-origin.
Python/CLI: finaletoolkit for DELFI ratios, WPS, end-motifs, MDS, cleavage profiles
Snakemake: Griffin pipeline for GC-corrected nucleosome profiling at TF/accessible sites
Python: pysam for a custom binned short/long ratio when a dependency-light readout is wanted
The Single Most Important Modern Insight -- Fragmentomics measures nucleosome positioning, not sequence; the biology is real but it can be destroyed in the wet lab or left un-GC-corrected
Plasma cfDNA is the digestion product of chromatin by apoptotic and intracellular nucleases, so every fragmentomic feature is a re-readout of the same physical object: the nucleosome footprint. The ~167 bp mode is the 147 bp histone-protected core plus ~20 bp of linker; the 10.4 bp sawtooth below it is the helical pitch of DNA on the histone surface (the nuclease cuts only where the minor groove faces out, once per turn). DELFI ratios, WPS, Griffin profiles, end-motifs, and OCF are four views of this one object, not four independent measurements -- their correlation inflates apparent multi-feature performance and leaks across train/test splits.
Two consequences dominate practice. First, the single biggest threat to any fragmentomic feature is GC, library, and batch confounding, not biology: an uncorrected genome-wide short/long ratio tracks GC content and library prep far more strongly than tumor fraction, which is why naive fragmentomics works in discovery and dies in validation. Griffin's actual contribution is its fragment-length-specific GC correction, not the nucleosome plot. Second, DELFI-style ratios are partly entangled with copy-number alteration and coverage (a bin's ratio reflects both fragmentation state and how many genomes contributed): deconvolving the fragmentation-specific signal from CNA is a known open problem, so a raw 5 Mb ratio is a hybrid CNA + fragmentation + GC readout, not pure fragmentation.
Coarse fragmentation state across the genome (entangled with CNA + GC)
Cristiano 2019 Nature 570:385
Nucleosome positioning
WPS: spanning fragments minus end-containing fragments in a sliding window
Where nucleosomes sit; promoter/gene-body phasing encodes tissue + expression
Snyder 2016 Cell 164:57
GC-corrected accessibility
Griffin: length-specific GC correction then composite coverage around site sets
TF/DHS accessibility in the tissue of origin; robust at low tumor fraction
Doebley 2022 Nat Commun 13:7475
End motifs / MDS
4-mer at the 5' cut site; MDS = normalized Shannon entropy of the 256 motifs
Nuclease-cleavage signature (DNASE1L3 sculpts the normal CC-ending spectrum)
Jiang 2020 Cancer Discov 10:664
Orientation-aware ends
OCF: phase offset between upstream- and downstream-end peaks in open chromatin
Tissue-of-origin via end orientation, not coverage
Sun 2019 Genome Res 29:418
DELFI = DNA EvaLuation of Fragments; the end-motif/MDS biology is anchored in DNASE1L3, whose deletion reorders length and end-motif frequencies (Serpas 2019 PNAS 116:641). Methodology here is still evolving (CNA deconvolution, standalone GC correctors like GCparagon) -- verify current best practice against live FinaleToolkit and Griffin docs before committing to one feature family.
End-motifs + MDS (FinaleToolkit end-motifs then mds)
MDS is one number per sample; rises in cancer as orderly DNASE1L3 cleavage is lost
Nucleosome positions / TF footprints directly
WPS (FinaleToolkit wps + adjust-wps)
WPS peaks recover nucleosome positions; S-WPS exposes TF footprints
Any cross-batch or cross-protocol comparison
GC-correct AND co-process through one pipeline, or do not compare
Uncorrected, cross-protocol fragmentomics is uninterpretable (see Failure Modes)
Genome-Wide Short/Long Ratio (custom DELFI-style)
Goal: Produce a genome-wide vector of short-to-long fragment ratios in fixed bins as a dependency-light DELFI-style feature, with the explicit caveat that without GC correction it is a GC + CNA readout.
Approach: Walk proper-pair fragments per bin from the BAM template length, classify each as short (100-150 bp) or long (151-220 bp), and emit the per-bin ratio. For a publication-grade profile, prefer FinaleToolkit delfi (which GC-corrects) over this illustrative version.
import pysam
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
defbinned_short_long_ratio(bam_path, bin_size=5_000_000, chroms=None):
'''Per-bin short(100-150)/long(151-220) ratio. NOT GC-corrected -- illustrative only.'''
chroms = chroms or [f'chr{i}'for i inrange(1, 23)]
bam = pysam.AlignmentFile(bam_path, 'rb')
rows = []
for chrom in chroms:
if chrom notin bam.references:
continue
n_bins = bam.get_reference_length(chrom) // bin_size + 1
short = np.zeros(n_bins)
long = np.zeros(n_bins)
for read in bam.fetch(chrom):
ifnot read.is_proper_pair or read.is_secondary or read.template_length <= 0:
continue
size = read.template_length
b = read.reference_start // bin_size
if100 <= size <= 150:
short[b] += 1elif151 <= size <= 220:
long[b] += 1
ratio = np.divide(short, long, out=np.full(n_bins, np.nan), where=long > 0)
rows.extend({'chrom': chrom, 'bin': i, 'short': short[i], 'long': long[i], 'ratio': ratio[i]} for i inrange(n_bins))
bam.close()
return pd.DataFrame(rows)
GC-Corrected DELFI Score (FinaleToolkit)
Goal: Compute a GC-corrected DELFI score so the genome-wide profile reflects fragmentation rather than base composition.
Approach: FinaleToolkit's delfi corrects short and long bin counts for GC before forming the ratio; the CLI and Python API are equivalent. Run on a BAM/CRAM or a tabix-indexed .frag.gz fragment file.
# CLI (subcommands are hyphenated). delfi positionals: input chrom_sizes reference bins_file.# GC correction is ON by default (-G disables it); 100kb bins are merged to 5Mb by default.# -R keeps no-coverage regions when the genome is not hg19.
finaletoolkit delfi sample.bam hg38.chrom.sizes hg38.fa bins_100kb.bed -g gaps.bed -R -o sample.delfi.bed
finaletoolkit end-motifs sample.bam hg38.fa -o sample.end_motifs.tsv
finaletoolkit mds sample.end_motifs.tsv # Motif Diversity Score (normalized Shannon entropy)
finaletoolkit wps sample.bam sites.bed -c hg38.chrom.sizes -o sites.wps.bw # per-site, not a single region
from finaletoolkit.frag import delfi, end_motifs, wps # public finaletoolkit.frag symbols# delfi() returns GC-corrected short/long per bin; end_motifs() returns an EndMotifFreqs# object whose .motif_diversity_score() gives the MDS (there is no top-level frag.mds).
Griffin Nucleosome Profiling (Snakemake pipeline)
Goal: Obtain GC-corrected composite coverage around a TF/accessible-site set for tissue-of-origin, robust at low tumor fraction and ~0.1x WGS.
Approach: Griffin is not an importable function; it is three sequential Snakemake modules. Run them in order against samples.yaml, the hg38 reference, and a sites.yaml site list.
# Run each module from Griffin's snakemakes/ dir (config edited per cohort)
snakemake -s griffin_genome_GC_frequency/griffin_genome_GC_frequency.snakefile --cores 8
snakemake -s griffin_GC_and_mappability_correction/griffin_GC_and_mappability_correction.snakefile --cores 8
snakemake -s griffin_nucleosome_profiling/griffin_nucleosome_profiling.snakefile --cores 8
# Output: GC-corrected + uncorrected composite coverage profiles around each site set.
Per-Method Failure Modes
Uncorrected GC dominates the ratio
Trigger: comparing raw short/long ratios across samples without GC correction. Mechanism: PCR and binding-based purification overrepresent GC-balanced fragments, and short vs long fragments have different GC dependence. Symptom: a beautiful discovery-cohort separation that collapses in validation; the profile clusters by sequencing batch. Fix: GC-correct (FinaleToolkit delfi/delfi-gc-correct, Griffin, or GCparagon) and co-process all samples through one pipeline.
Cross-protocol non-comparability
Trigger: combining ssDNA and dsDNA libraries, or two end-repair/PCR chemistries, in one analysis. Mechanism: ssDNA prep recovers the sub-100 bp ultrashort population that dsDNA prep loses at the double-strand ligation step, shifting the entire size distribution and every derived feature. Symptom: a model trained on one chemistry mislabels the other systematically. Fix: a fragmentomic model is conditioned on its library chemistry -- match protocols, never cross them, and state the prep as a precondition.
DELFI / CNA entanglement
Trigger: interpreting a 5 Mb ratio bin as pure fragmentation. Mechanism: copy-number alterations change how many genomes contribute to a bin, moving coverage and therefore the ratio independent of fragmentation. Symptom: ratio "signal" that mirrors the CNA profile. Fix: treat DELFI as a hybrid CNA + fragmentation + GC feature; deconvolve with caution and do not overclaim a pure fragmentation readout.
Low-coverage WPS noise
Trigger: computing WPS or per-site profiles on too few fragments. Mechanism: WPS is a difference of spanning vs end-containing counts; at low coverage both terms are tiny and the score is dominated by sampling noise. Symptom: no clean nucleosome periodicity, jagged tracks. Fix: aggregate over many copies of a site (composite profiles, Griffin/multi_wps), smooth (adjust-wps), and require adequate depth before single-locus WPS.
Quantitative Thresholds
Threshold
Source
Rationale
Mononucleosome mode ~167 bp (147 core + ~20 linker)
Snyder 2016 Cell 164:57
The protected core is 147 bp; the variable ~20 bp linker is the rest of the mode
10.4 bp periodicity below 167 bp
Snyder 2016
Helical pitch of B-form DNA; the cleanest sanity check that footprints and size estimation are sane
Di-/tri-nucleosome ~334 / ~500 bp
Snyder 2016
Successive nucleosomes add ~167 bp each
ctDNA mode ~20-50 bp shorter (toward ~145 bp), enrich 90-150 bp
Mouliere 2018 Sci Transl Med 10:eaat4921
Tumor chromatin/nuclease processing shifts length down; the lever size selection exploits
Short 100-150 bp vs long 151-220 bp
Cristiano 2019 Nature 570:385
The DELFI ratio numerator/denominator windows
~5 Mb DELFI bins
Cristiano 2019
Bin scale at which the genome-wide ratio vector was defined and classified
In-silico size selection 90-150 bp
Mouliere 2018
Retaining this window enriches tumor fraction >2x in >95% of cases, >4x in >10%
The categorical end-motif space and its single-scalar diversity summary
Size selection is a tumor-fraction-vs-depth lever, not a universal win: it discards the 167 bp bulk, so it helps when ctDNA is dilute and short but hurts when already depth-limited.
Common Errors
Error / symptom
Cause
Solution
pip install delfi fails / no DELFI CLI
DELFI is a method + company, not a package
Compute DELFI features via FinaleToolkit delfi, or a custom binned ratio
finaletoolkit filter-bam not found
The subcommand is filter-file, not filter-bam
Use finaletoolkit filter-file for mapq/size/region filtering
import griffin fails
Griffin is a Snakemake pipeline, not an importable module
Run the three griffin_* snakefiles in sequence
Profiles cluster by batch, not biology
Uncorrected GC / mixed protocols
GC-correct and co-process one chemistry through one pipeline
Confusing end-motif and breakpoint-motif
Different objects (cut-site 4-mer vs k-mer spanning the cut)
FinaleToolkit exposes both: end-motifs vs breakpoint-motifs
References
Snyder MW, Kircher M, Hill AJ, Daza RM, Shendure J. 2016. Cell-free DNA comprises an in vivo nucleosome footprint that informs its tissues-of-origin. Cell 164(1-2):57-68. -- nucleosome footprint, 167 bp, 10.4 bp periodicity, WPS.
Cristiano S, Leal A, Phallen J, et al. 2019. Genome-wide cell-free DNA fragmentation in patients with cancer. Nature 570(7761):385-389. -- DELFI; 5 Mb bins, short/long ratio.
Mouliere F, Chandrananda D, Piskorz AM, et al. 2018. Enhanced detection of circulating tumor DNA by fragment size analysis. Sci Transl Med 10(466):eaat4921. -- size selection, 90-150 bp enrichment.
Doebley A-L, Ko M, Liao H, et al. 2022. A framework for clinical cancer subtyping from nucleosome profiling of cell-free DNA. Nat Commun 13:7475. -- Griffin; length-specific GC correction.
Jiang P, Sun K, Peng W, et al. 2020. Plasma DNA end-motif profiling as a fragmentomic marker in cancer, pregnancy, and transplantation. Cancer Discov 10(5):664-673. -- end motifs and MDS (journal is Cancer Discovery, not PNAS).
Sun K, Jiang P, Wong AIC, et al. 2019. Orientation-aware plasma cell-free DNA fragmentation analysis in open chromatin regions informs tissue of origin. Genome Res 29(3):418-427. -- OCF.
Serpas L, Chan RWY, Jiang P, et al. 2019. Dnase1l3 deletion causes aberrations in length and end-motif frequencies in plasma DNA. PNAS 116(2):641-649. -- DNASE1L3 biology behind end motifs.
Burnham P, Kim MS, Agbor-Enoh S, et al. 2016. Single-stranded DNA library preparation uncovers the origin and diversity of ultrashort cell-free DNA in plasma. Sci Rep 6:27859. -- ssDNA prep recovers ultrashort cfDNA.
FinaleToolkit: accelerating cell-free DNA fragmentation analysis with a high-speed computational toolkit. 2025. Bioinformatics Advances 5(1):vbaf236. -- the toolkit; ~50x faster WPS than the original Snyder implementation on BH01 (scope-limited).
Related Skills
cfdna-preprocessing - library prep determines which fragments (and features) are recoverable
tumor-fraction-estimation - fragmentomics enables signal below the CNA-based TF floor
methylation-based-detection - orthogonal genome-wide cfDNA signal
