888e7470c14eeecdca310ed36bb45c3c00ae8052
lrnassar
  Tue Apr 21 15:14:04 2026 -0700
QA fixes for MPRA superTrack. refs #37359

Fix broken mpraVarDb bigDataUrl — pointed at /gbdb/hg38/mpra/mpravardb.bb
but the file is at /gbdb/hg38/mpra/mpravardb/mpravardb.bb, causing
hgTrackDb -strict to silently drop the subtrack.

Rebuild mpravardb.bb after two fixes in mpravardbToBed.py: sanitize UTF-8
in user-visible string fields (curly quotes, primes, NBSP mojibake) that
the browser does not transcode, eliminating ~246k non-ASCII occurrences
across 42% of rows; and change safe_float / pval_to_score to write NaN
and return score 0 for NA / out-of-range p-values instead of 0.0 and
score 1000 (previously inflated untested variants to the top of
score-sorted views).

trackDb stanza cleanup: shorten mpraVarDb longLabel, drop superfluous
type bed 4 from superTrack, make bigBed 9+13 explicit, remove redundant
mouseOverField, align parent mpra on, add filterValues for
cell_line/assay/cellLine and filterByRange sliders for percentile_rank /
fdr / log2FC, add labelFields and maxWindowToDraw.

Description pages: add cross-species disclosure (mouse reporter cells
used to assay human sequences), update mpraVarDb header to post-liftOver
count 239,028 with Studies-table footnote, fix mpraVarDb.html
download-server paths, soften imprecise "51 MPRA experiments" claim in
mpra.html and mprabase.html.

relatedTracks.ra: reciprocal mpra <-> wgEncodeReg4 and mpra <-> cCREs.

Expand mpra.txt makedoc with upstream provenance and QA-rebuild log.

diff --git src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/mprabase.html src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/mprabase.html
index 837554a8c0c..c316baee431 100644
--- src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/mprabase.html
+++ src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/mprabase.html
@@ -1,129 +1,136 @@
 <h2>Description</h2>
 <p>
 Massively Parallel Reporter Assays (MPRAs) and related methods such as STARR-seq
 enable quantitative testing of thousands of candidate regulatory DNA sequences in
 parallel by linking each sequence to a reporter gene and measuring transcriptional
 output using sequencing.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 The <b>MPRA Base</b> track shows 41,275 experimentally tested cis-regulatory elements
-from the <a href="http://mprabase.ucsf.edu/app/mprabase" target="_blank">MPRA Base</a>
+curated from the <a href="http://mprabase.ucsf.edu/app/mprabase" target="_blank">MPRA Base</a>
 database
-(<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38045264/" target="_blank">Zhao et al., 2023</a>).
+(<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38045264/" target="_blank">Zhao et al., 2023</a>),
+drawn from MPRA, STARR-seq, and related reporter assay experiments.
 The database integrates data from multiple studies, assay platforms (lentiMPRA,
 plasmidMPRA, STARR-seq, CRE-seq, and others), and cell types while preserving
 experiment-level resolution. Only elements derived from genomic fragments that can
 be mapped to the reference genome are included; synthetic or designed oligonucleotide
 libraries without genomic coordinates are excluded.
 </p>
+<p>
+<b>Note on cell lines:</b> The cell line shown for each element is the reporter
+cell line in which the genomic fragment was assayed. One study (Mattioli et al.,
+2020) used mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC) as one of its reporter systems; the
+fragments retain their human (hg38) coordinates.
+</p>
 
 <h2>Display Conventions</h2>
 <p>
 Each item represents a genomic fragment tested within a specific experiment, defined
 as a unique combination of cell line, assay type, and publication (PMID). The same
 genomic region may appear multiple times if tested in different experiments.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Items are colored by percentile rank of the mean raw activity score within each experiment:
 </p>
 <ul>
 <li><span style="color:blue;"><b>Blue</b></span> &mdash; percentile &lt; 50</li>
 <li><span style="color:orange;"><b>Orange</b></span> &mdash; percentile 50&ndash;74</li>
 <li><span style="color:red;"><b>Red</b></span> &mdash; percentile &ge; 75</li>
 </ul>
 
 <p>
 The mouse-over shows the cell line, assay type, raw activity score, percentile rank,
 and citation for each element.
 </p>
 
 <h2>Methods</h2>
 <p>
 Within each experiment, replicate measurements for the same genomic fragment were
 aggregated by computing the mean raw activity score. The original dataset contained
 211,053 replicate-level measurements; after aggregation, the final track contains
 41,275 unique experiment-level genomic elements.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Elements are ranked by mean raw activity score independently within each experiment,
 and a percentile rank (0&ndash;100) is computed per experiment to avoid cross-study
 distortions caused by differing assay dynamic ranges.
 </p>
 
 <h2>Experiments</h2>
 <p>
 The following table lists the experiments represented in this track.
 </p>
 
 <table class="stdTbl">
 <tr>
   <th>PMID</th>
   <th>Author</th>
   <th>Year</th>
   <th>Lab</th>
   <th>Cell type</th>
   <th>Assay</th>
   <th>Elements</th>
 </tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27831498/" target="_blank">27831498</a></td><td>Inoue et al.</td><td>2017</td><td>Shendure Lab</td><td>HepG2</td><td>lentiMPRA</td><td>2,241</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30045748/" target="_blank">30045748</a></td><td>Klein et al.</td><td>2018</td><td>Shendure Lab</td><td>HepG2</td><td>STARR-seq</td><td>7,064</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32483191/" target="_blank">32483191</a></td><td>Choi et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Brown Lab</td><td>HEK293FT</td><td>lentiMPRA</td><td>840</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32483191/" target="_blank">32483191</a></td><td>Choi et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Brown Lab</td><td>UACC903</td><td>lentiMPRA</td><td>840</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32819422/" target="_blank">32819422</a></td><td>Mattioli et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Mele Lab</td><td>HUES64</td><td>plasmidMPRA</td><td>6,954</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32819422/" target="_blank">32819422</a></td><td>Mattioli et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Mele Lab</td><td>mESC</td><td>plasmidMPRA</td><td>6,954</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33046894/" target="_blank">33046894</a></td><td>Klein et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Shendure Lab</td><td>HepG2</td><td>lentiMPRA</td><td>8,116</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33046894/" target="_blank">33046894</a></td><td>Klein et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Shendure Lab</td><td>HepG2</td><td>plasmidMPRA</td><td>2,228</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33046894/" target="_blank">33046894</a></td><td>Klein et al.</td><td>2020</td><td>Shendure Lab</td><td>HepG2</td><td>STARR-seq</td><td>2,230</td></tr>
 <tr><td><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36834916/" target="_blank">36834916</a></td><td>Koesterich et al.</td><td>2023</td><td>Kreimer Lab</td><td>NPC</td><td>lentiMPRA</td><td>3,807</td></tr>
 </table>
 
 <h2>Data Access</h2>
 <p>
 The data can be explored interactively in table format with the
 <a href="../cgi-bin/hgTables">Table Browser</a> or the
 <a href="../cgi-bin/hgIntegrator">Data Integrator</a>
 and exported from there to spreadsheet or tab-sep tables.
 From scripts, the data can be accessed through our
 <a href="https://api.genome.ucsc.edu" target="_blank">API</a>, track=<i>mprabase</i>.
 </p>
 <p>
 For automated download and analysis, the genome annotation is stored in a bigBed
 file that can be downloaded from
 <a href="http://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/gbdb/hg38/mpra/mprabase" target="_blank">our download server</a>.
 The file for this track is called <tt>mprabase.bb</tt>. Individual
 regions or the whole genome annotation can be obtained using our tool
 <tt>bigBedToBed</tt>, which can be compiled from the source code or downloaded as a
 precompiled binary for your system. Instructions for downloading source code and
 binaries can be found
 <a href="http://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/downloads.html#utilities_downloads" target="_blank">here</a>.
 The tool can also be used to obtain features within a given range, e.g.
 <tt>bigBedToBed http://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/gbdb/hg38/mpra/mprabase/mprabase.bb -chrom=chr21 -start=0 -end=100000000 stdout</tt>
 </p>
 <p>
 The original data can be downloaded from the
 <a href="http://mprabase.ucsf.edu/app/mprabase" target="_blank">MPRA Base web application</a>.
 </p>
 
 <h2>Credits</h2>
 <p>
 Thanks to Varda Singhal, Jianyu Zhao, and the
 <a href="https://pharm.ucsf.edu/ahituv" target="_blank">Ahituv Lab</a>
 at the University of California San Francisco for creating and curating MPRA Base and for creating this track.
 </p>
 
 <h2>References</h2>
 
 
 <p>
 Zhao J, Baltoumas FA, Konnaris MA, Mouratidis I, Liu Z, Sims J, Agarwal V, Pavlopoulos GA,
 Georgakopoulos-Soares I, Ahituv N.
 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.19.567742" target="_blank">
 MPRAbase: A Massively Parallel Reporter Assay Database</a>.
 <em>bioRxiv</em>. 2023 Nov 22;.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38045264" target="_blank">38045264</a>; PMC: <a
 href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10690217/" target="_blank">PMC10690217</a>
 </p>