What do the various CRISPR confounders mean?

Q&A
1

I’ve noticed for several genes that the top predictors are confounders, especially for the CRISPR-Cas9 screens. It is possible to download a spreadsheet with all of the CRISPR confounders and values for each cell line. I can’t find where those confounders are defined. Some of them are self explanatory, others are less. What do the confounders mean (pasted below, especially the ones in bold)? Thanks
CasActivity
GrowthPatternAdherent
GrowthPatternMixed
GrowthPatternSuspension
GrowthPatternUnknown
LibraryAvana
LibraryKY
ScreenDoublingTime
ScreenFPR
ScreenMeanEssentialDepletion
ScreenMeanNonessentialDepletion
ScreenNNMD
ScreenROCAUC
ScreenSTDEssentials
ScreenSTDNonessentials
ScreenType2DS

2

I believe most of these should be described in the README file for the depmap data release.

For example, the two you have in bold are described as:

  • ScreenROCAUC: area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve for essential (positive) vs nonessentials (negative) controls
  • ScreenFPR: false positive rate, computed as fraction of nonessentials in the 15th percentile most depleted genes

Thanks,
Phil