跟讀練習: Sequence Variant Literature Search Tips and Tricks - 通過影片學習英語口語

選擇練習模式

每種模式都會開啟全屏練習室。

129 句

如果句子過短或過長，請點選 Edit 進行調整。

Hi, my name is Jessica Mester.

I'm a genetic counselor at GeneDx and a member of the ClinGen Education Workgroup.

This presentation will provide a brief introduction into performing a literature search for sequence variant interpretation.

Our time today will focus on three main points relevant to

both bio curators working to classify variants as well as clinicians

might be searching for additional information on a variant picked up in one of their patients.

We'll discuss how to incorporate nomenclature into an effective literature search, what resources to use to find articles,

and we'll also talk about some common speed bumps you may hit during your literature search and ways to overcome them. But first,

let's talk about the purpose of doing a literature search to help us wrap our heads around what we're looking for.

As a biocurator, you're looking for articles that provide evidence for the purpose of applying ACMG criteria.

These include papers describing functional studies or that characterize the potential molecular impact of the variant, as well as clinically focused papers giving patient phenotype,

describing families that provide segregation evidence, or case control studies.

Remember that you're looking for evidence that could either support or refute pathogenicity.

As a clinician, in addition to helping you get a sense for what information about a variant may support a laboratory's classification,

you may also do a literature search to help you understand more about the phenotypic spectrum associated with the disease,

the types of variants associated with the disease, or one specific variant of interest.

Before we begin, I also want to enforce the idea that there is no such thing as the perfect literature search tool.

Using a combination of sources is generally necessary to be thorough and get the job done.

However, there are a few resources

that have already done some of the heavy lifting regarding compiling publications

that describe a specific variant that provide a helpful starting point.

HGMD, the human gene mutation database, has both a professional and a public version that provides variant level data with PubMed IDs and links to articles.

The free version isn't as up - to -date as the paid version.

Also, be aware

that HGMD tends to be very generous with labeling variants seen in any patient with a phenotype as being disease -associated,

but did not classify variants using the ACMG -AMP criteria.

As such, HGMG is best used as a source to help you find literature that may help you classify a variant,

but should not be considered a repository of curated pathogenic variants.

There are also gene -specific databases, many listed at the link provided or you can find via a Google search,

which may have compiled critical literature about a specific gene as well as variant -level evidence.

If you expect to be curating

or investigating a number of variants for a particular gene and a gene -specific database is available,

I highly encourage you to familiarize yourself with this resource

so you can fully understand where they get their information from and how to best utilize it.

Finally, some ClinVar submitters provide citations with PubMed IDs or links to other evidence that support their classification.

However, be cautious, as sometimes they'll link to an article not because it contains information on your variant,

but because it describes a pathogenic variant at the same residue that was used as evidence to support classification.

There are also tools that are working to try and simplify the literature search process.

Two I wanted to highlight are Mastermind, for which ClinGen curators get access to the full version for a few months trial period,

and LitVar, which is an NCBI tool, and other similar tools are in development.

While searching PubMed for articles on a specific variant will find articles where the variant appears in the abstract or title,

often for papers that list a number of variants identified in a population with a specific phenotype, the variant information is only contained within a table,

sometimes just in supplemental data, and wouldn't be picked up on a PubMed search.

As a result, the two tools

that I've personally found to be the most effective for finding variant -specific literature are Google and Google Scholar.

Now, I will say there is a bit of a learning curve with using Google search results, but with time and experience you'll start to recognize

which search hits are worth looking into further and which don't lead you to useful links.

For example, searching ATM variants finds scientific publications as well as local ATM machine locations.

But sometimes you'll find a link that looks really helpful, such as a supplemental table to an article, but the source article isn't clearly specified.

We'll walk through an example of that later in this talk.

Google Scholar is more specific than Google

because it is limited to published academic literature

and tends to be more effective at finding variants listed in a table within the actual paper,

but it may not find you publications where your variant is only in a supplemental table.

When building your search term, you want to include the name of your gene as well as several versions of the variant nomenclature.

I have some specific examples on the next slide, but want to preview a few helpful hints here.

Using quotation marks and the Boolean operators AND and OR can help make sure your search output is comprehensive,

but not so extensive that you're spending hours digging through search hits for a single variant.

Quotation marks help you specifically find an exact match for the text within the marks.

While we hope that publications will stick to defined HGVS nomenclature, sometimes it helps to be a little creative,

especially for older publications, and use genomic position as well as variant nomenclature in your search string.

If your gene has aliases or historic names, including those may help.

You also need to be aware of alternate transcripts or nomenclature that might have been commonly used in addition to HGVS.

Now, I won't belabor this point, as it could certainly merit its own separate talk,

but you might be able to identify alternate transcripts or nomenclature on a laboratory report in ClinVar,

or for biocurators who are curating in the variant curation interface, this information may also appear in the evidence view.

I'll also direct you towards Dr. Marino DeStefano's excellent article

and talks on alternate transcripts on the ClinGen YouTube channel for more information on this topic.

So, here are examples of search strings you might use for specific types of variants.

In addition to quotation marks and the AND or Boolean operators, you'll also see an asterisk here and there.

In search language, this is called a wildcard operator, and will return anything that starts with the preceding text.

Looking at a few examples, you'll see in the first row for the P10 nonsense variant ARG335 -TER,

the CD nomenclature 1003C2T is used without the C that is a part of HGVS nomenclature,

as some articles do not include the CDOT even though they should.

You'll also see two versions of the CDOT nomenclature, one with a space between the nucleotide position and the nucleotide change, and one with no space.

In addition to TER as the HGVS termination for a stop codon, I also included ARCH335 -STOP because,

again, that nomenclature might be used for nonsense variants, particularly in older publications.

And finally, the genomic position of the nucleotide change is included for good measure.

Looking through the other examples, you'll see more of the same.

Each includes nomenclature referring to the nucleotide change, protein change, and genomic position.

Bringing your attention to the in -frame indel row, while the HGVS nomenclature specifies the nucleotides deleted .

An author might have shortened this to say instead to save column space in a table.

Now I want to take you through an example of Google search results for the MYBPC3 frameshift variant in the previous table.

At first, you might think, oh no, I have to review 113 articles?

I promise you, although that looks intimidating, it's actually not that bad.

Trying this out, you'll see that the search output includes multiple links from the same source,

many of which you'll instantly recognize as ClinVar entries for the variant, Nomad links, or other databases you might have already reviewed.

Also note that these searches will pull up articles where your gene is mentioned and your variant is mentioned, but they don't line up.

Many genes were looked at in the study and a variant with the same cDNA nomenclature was found in a different gene.

When you first start learning this process, I do think it's helpful to explore most of the links,

especially on the first few pages of your search result, to familiarize yourself with the kinds of search hits that are returned.

Over time, you'll recognize which search hits are likely to lead you to useful information and really need to be explored.

So using the search string for that MYBPC3 frameshift variant, one of your first Google hits looks really promising and and indeed,

takes you directly to the actual article in PLAS 1 that contains your variant.

This is the best case scenario.

Other links you'll often see are to database entries for your variant in ClinVar, which tends to be at the top of Google search results.

You may also find links to an LOVD entry, which when you click on the link, takes you into LOVD.

Here for this variant, we see there is a reference cited which we'd want to find and review if we hadn't already.

Clicking on this link takes you to the PubMed entry for the article, which you'd hopefully then be able to access to look for your variant.

100

Another possible result of a Google search takes you on a bit of a treasure hunt.

101

This link takes you to a Word document, which is a supplementary table to an article that appears to contain your specific variant.

102

However, the name of the article, year of publication, etc. aren't clearly specified, but clues are given within the name of the word document.

103

Taking these clues to the Genetics in Medicine journal website, journal websites typically have a search tool at the top of the page.

104

Clicking this, let's add our possible author name, Funke, and possible publication date of 2010 to see what we get.

105

And, lo and behold, it looks like we might have a match.

106

And when you look at this article, indeed, it has our variant and the supplemental table matches what we found in Google.

107

This same search phrase in Google Scholar only gives us one article, which is different from the other three we found using Google,

108

but still looks like it might include a patient with our variant and HCM.

109

Words of caution when looking at variant -specific literature.

110

Although it's good practice as an author to state

111

when a patient included in your paper has previously been published elsewhere and then cite that publication,

112

perhaps an author did not realize the patient was already published, resulting in the same patient or family being presented in multiple separate publications.

113

This is important, as seeing a variant in multiple independent probands might lead an expert panel to apply a higher level of phenotype -related evidence.

114

Use your common sense.

115

If the authors between the articles have some overlap, if the same study cohort is being utilized,

116

or if specific clinical details like age diagnosis and phenotype are highly aligned, chances are it's just one family or patient that was reported multiple times.

117

In these situations, it's best to err on the side of caution

118

and take a conservative approach by only counting apparently similar probands or families once.

119

In summary, I hope you come away from this talk knowing

120

that developing literature search skills isn't something that you become highly skilled at overnight, but is a learning process that improves with time and practice.

121

I hope you'll look to available database resources to increase your efficiency,

122

as well as be able to build search strings to perform comprehensive searches using Google and Google Scholar.

123

Finally, always look at the source publication to make sure your variant of interest is present

124

and to understand how the information contained in the article relates to your needs.

125

I hope this has been a useful introduction to literature searches for sequence variant interpretation.

126

Please visit www .clinicalgenome .org for additional educational resources and to learn more about ClinGen initiatives.

127

Our funding sources are listed at the bottom of this slide.

128

Please feel free to contact ClinGen by email at ClinGen at clinicalgenome .org with questions or feedback.

129

Thank you.

下載應用

流利口語所需的一切

AI 發音評分逐句打分

音標練習掌握每個音

詞彙學習建立你的詞庫

詞彙遊戲邊玩邊學

掃碼

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

本課的詞彙與口語要點

這節口語課以影片“Sequence Variant Literature Search Tips and Tricks”為素材。影片中反覆出現的詞有：variant, search, article, Google, literature。這段影片共有 5 個句子、2136 個單詞可供跟讀。講話部分時長為 12:34。說話人語速自然，每分鐘約 170 個詞，接近日常對話。只有 79% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞，詞彙難度較高。

影片中的重點詞彙

影片中 15 個值得學習的單詞，附發音和釋義：

單詞	發音	釋義
variant 名詞	/ˈvæɹi.ənt/	變體 /變體, 異體 /異體
publication 名詞	/ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/	出版, 發表 /發表
gene 名詞	/d͡ʒiːn/	基因
database 名詞	/ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/	資料庫 /資料庫
helpful 形容詞	/ˈhɛlp.fl̩/	有幫助 /有幫助
string 名詞	/stɹɪŋ/	線 /線
curator 名詞	/kjʊəˈɹeɪtə(ɹ)/	館長 /館長, 策展人
operator 名詞	/ˈɑpəˌɹeɪtɚ/	話務員 /話務員, 接線員 /接線員
classification 名詞	/ˌklæsɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/	分類 /分類
transcript 名詞	/ˈtɹæn.skɹɪpt/	副本, 抄本
quotation 名詞	/kwoʊˈteɪʃn̩/	報價 /報價
output 名詞	/ˈaʊtpʊt/	輸出 /輸出
comprehensive 形容詞	/ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/	全面的, 綜合的 /綜合的
sequence 名詞	/ˈsiː.kwəns/	序列, 順序 /順序
explore 動詞	/ɪkˈsploɹ/	探索, 探險 /探險

影片中的語法

說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：

結構	影片中的用法
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	should not be considered · was used · is only contained
現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事	have already done · I've personally found · has previously been published
定語從句 who / which + 從句 — 補充說明人或事物	LitVar, which is · document, which is · article, which is

需要注意的發音

說話人用了 34 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 you'll, we'll, you're。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。

“th” 音: thorough /ˈθʌɹoʊ/, pathogenic /pæθəˈd͡ʒɛnɪk/, pathogenicity /ˌpæθəd͡ʒəˈnɪsɪti/
“sh” 和 “zh” 音: publication /ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/, classification /ˌklæsɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, quotation /kwoʊˈteɪʃn̩/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, caution /ˈkɔːʃ(ə)n/
長單詞——注意重音位置: publication /ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/, operator /ˈɑpəˌɹeɪtɚ/, classification /ˌklæsɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, comprehensive /ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/, laboratory /ˈlæb(ə)ɹəˌtɔɹi/

中文母語者容易讀錯的音：

/v/ — 不要讀成 /w/，上齒輕觸下唇: variant /ˈvæɹi.ənt/, comprehensive /ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/, initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, overcome /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/
詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚，後面不要加母音: variant /ˈvæɹi.ənt/, database /ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/, alternate /ˈɔl.tɚ.nət/, transcript /ˈtɹæn.skɹɪpt/, output /ˈaʊtpʊt/
/r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: explore /ɪkˈsploɹ/, laboratory /ˈlæb(ə)ɹəˌtɔɹi/, elsewhere /ˈɛlsˌʍɛɹ/, relate /ɹɪˈleɪt/, molecular /məˈlɛk.jə.ləɹ/

如何用這段影片練習

先完整聽一遍影片，不要開口，記下不認識的單詞。
先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀，熟練之後再回到正常速度。
錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 variant, publication, gene 這類單詞。

什麼是跟讀法？

跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟讀法: 閱讀完整分步指南 →

跟讀練習: Sequence Variant Literature Search Tips and Tricks - 通過影片學習英語口語

選擇練習模式

下載應用

推薦影片

CNV analysis with Daniel Howrigan

Academic Writing for 2026: How to Link Literature to Research Questions

Vaginal Swabs | STI Screening | OSCE Guide | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB 2

How We Incorporate Patient Priorities Care into Our Clinical Pharmacy Practices

The Complete Guide to Hybrid Search in RAG (BM25 + Embeddings + Reranker)

Introduction to HPLC - Lecture 1: HPLC Basics

Quick Study: How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions

Lecture 12: Retina, Part 2: Retinal vascular occlusions

We can cure almost all human diseases. Here’s how. | Albert-László Barabási

Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Trial Designs With Dr Kidwell

SOFI: Sequence-based, cross-sectoral, One-health surveillance of food-borne infections | IMMEM XIV

RE2 Unit 9B