Borzoi (sequence → function)

Overview

Borzoi (Linder et al. 2025; calico/borzoi) is a sequence-to-function deep-learning model: given a DNA sequence over a long genomic context, it predicts genome-wide functional tracks — RNA-seq, CAGE, ATAC-seq, and ChIP coverage across many assays/tissues. Its headline use is non-coding variant effect scoring: run the reference and alternate alleles through the model and compare predicted tracks to estimate a regulatory variant's impact on expression or chromatin.

It predicts function from sequence; it does not look up known variants. For a variant's population frequency use alterlab-gnomad; for clinical significance use alterlab-clinvar.

When to Use This Skill