We analysed the intersection of deletions binned by VAF with various classes of genic and intergenic functional elements (Fig. 2a, Extended Data Fig. 7). The CDSs, untranslated regions (UTRs) and introns of genes, in addition to ENCODE31 transcription factor binding sites and ultrasensitive noncoding regions, showed a significant depletion (P < 0.001; permutation testing in each VAF bin) compared to a random background model. In general, these elements are more depleted (in terms of fold change) in common VAF bins compared to rarer deletion alleles, in keeping with purifying10 (or in some cases background32) selection. Genes more intolerant to mutation (as measured from SNP diversity, residual variation intolerance score (RVIS)33 < 20) exhibited the most pronounced depletion (P < 0.001; permutation testing between pairs of RVIS-score categories). All other SV classes exhibited similar signatures of selection; when compared to deletions these depletions were, however, more attenuated (Fig. 2b, Extended Data Fig. 7). Additional assessment of the site frequency spectrum showed that, as deletion sizes increase, these SVs become rarer (P < 2.2 × 10−16; linear model, F-test), evidence of purifying
