Challenges, Pitfalls, and Best Practices for Deep Learning in Genomics

Deep learning (DL) is the branch of machine learning (ML) that encompasses deep neural networks (DNNs), with many artificial neurons arranged into several layers that mimic the human brain. Recently, DL algorithms have shown impressive results in several domains of life sciences and biotechnology. Even though the application of DL in genomics is relatively new, it has led to a fundamental understanding of biological and cellular processes in living systems. This has prompted many companies to leverage DL to solve important problems such as drug development, treatment of patients, and disease control, ultimately paving the way toward the promise of precision medicine in near future. Genomics is a data-rich discipline and is replete with complex datasets and often ill-understood. DL’s success in genomics is largely attributed to its ability to perform knowledge extraction and pattern recognition from complex...