Fig. 1

The OncodriveFML approach to detect signals of positive selection. a The functional impact (FI) of mutations may be computed in different manners for different types of genomic elements. b The FI of somatic mutations occurring in a genomics element across tumors are computed. c Mutation sets are randomly sampled from the element under analysis and the FI score of each simulated mutation is obtained. d The mean FI of the mutations observed in the element (red dots) is compared to the distribution of FI means of randomly generated mutations (violin plots) to obtain an empirical p value. On the left is shown an example of highly significant p value while the violin plot on the right illustrates a non-significant case