Combining fastq reads of twin pairs to increase coverage

Question

[KJ]

Suppose I have fastq reads of both co-twins of monozygotic twins. Would it be beneficial to combine the fastq reads of these two people to increase coverage? Is this commonly done?

I'd assume that coverage would increase hugely, with the only drawback being less sensitive to detect post-twinning mutations since the mutation in one twin would not be seen in sequence reads in the other twin.

All suggestions / links are more than welcome!

[jotan]

Are you talking about genome sequencing? (Not ChIP-seq/RNA-seq).

[KJ]

Whole genome sequencing, yes.

Answer 1

[andrew.j.skelton73]

As an exploratory measure, maybe. It depends what your experimental question is.

[KJ]

I was thinking, maybe to discovere pre-twinning mutations

[andrew.j.skelton73]

In that case, don't combine. Keep them separate and look for differences between call sets.