Genetic Processes Commons^™

Single Cell Long Read Whole Genome Sequencing Reveals Somatic Transposon Activity In Human Brain, Michal B Izydorczyk, Ester Kalef-Ezra, Dominic W Horner, Xinchang Zheng, Nadine Holmes, Marco Toffoli, Zeliha Sahin, Yi Han, Heer H Mehta, Sonja W Scholz, Clifton L Dalgard, Donna M Muzny, Adam Ameur, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Christos Proukakis

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The advent of single cell DNA sequencing revealed astonishing dynamics of genomic variability, but failed at characterizing smaller to mid size variants that on the germline level have a profound impact. In this work we discover previously uncharacterized genomic dynamics in 18 cells from three human brains utilizing single cell long-read whole genome sequencing. This provides key insights into the dynamic of the genomes of individual cells and further highlights brain specific activity of transposable elements, but requires validation in larger studies.

Whole-Genome Sequencing Reveals Individual And Cohort Level Insights Into Chromosome 9p Syndromes, Yingxi Wang, Eleanor I Sams, Rachel Slaugh, Sandra Crocker, Emily Cordova Hurtado, Sophia Tracy, Ying-Chen Claire Hou, Christopher Markovic, Kostandin Valle, Victoria Tate, Khadija Belhassan, Elizabeth Appelbaum, Titilope Akinwe, Rodrigo T Starosta, Yang Cao, Amber Neilson, Yu Liu, Nathaniel Jensen, Reza Ghasemi, Tina Lindsay, Juana Manuel, Sophia Couteranis, Milinn Kremitzki, Jack Ustanik, Thomas Antonacci, Jeffrey K Ng, Andrew Emory, Laura Metz, Tracie Deluca, Katherine N Lyons, Toni Sinnwell, Brianne Thomeczek, Kymme Wang, Nick Sisneros, Megha Muraleedharan, Anantha Kethireddy, Marco Corbo, Harsha Gowda, Katherine A King, Christina A Gurnett, Susan K Dutcher, Catherine Gooch, Yang E Li, Matthew W Mitchell, Kevin A Peterson, Amjad Horani, Jill A Rosenfeld, Weimin Bi, Pawel Stankiewicz, Hsiao-Tuan Chao, Jennifer E Posey, Christopher M Grochowski, Zain Dardas, Erik G Puffenberger, Christopher E Pearson, Frank Kooy, Dale Annear, A Micheil Innes, Michael Heinz, Richard Head, Robert Fulton, Stephan Toutain, 9p-Arch, Lucinda Antonacci-Fulton, Xiaoxia Cui, Robi D Mitra, F Sessions Cole, Julie Neidich, Patricia I Dickson, Jeffrey Milbrandt, Tychele N Turner

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Previous genomic efforts on chromosome 9p deletion and duplication syndromes have utilized low-resolution strategies (i.e., karyotypes, chromosome microarrays). These studies have provided important initial insights into these syndromes. This current study is the first large-scale whole-genome sequencing (WGS) study of 100 individuals from families with chromosome 9p syndromes.

Methods: Through the newly formed 9P-ARCH (Advanced Research in Chromosomal Health: Genomic, Phenotypic, and Functional Aspects of 9p-Related syndromes) research network, we assembled a cohort of individuals from families with chromosome 9p syndromes. WGS was applied to 100 individuals, and other genomic technologies were applied to a subset of individuals. To …

Improved Allele Frequencies In Gnomad Through Local Ancestry Inference, Pragati Kore, Michael W Wilson, Grace Tiao, Katherine Chao, Philip W Darnowsky, Nicholas A Watts, Jessica Honorato Mauer, Samantha M Baxter, Genome Aggregation Database Consortium, Heidi L Rehm, Mark J Daly, Konrad J Karczewski, Elizabeth G Atkinson

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) is a foundational resource for allele frequency data, widely used in genomic research and clinical interpretation. However, traditional estimates rely on individual-level genetic ancestry groupings that may obscure variation in recently admixed populations. To improve resolution, we applied local ancestry inference (LAI) to over 27 million variants in two admixed groups: Admixed American (n = 7612) and African/African American (n = 20,250), deriving ancestry-specific allele frequencies. We show that 78.5% and 85.1% of variants in these groups, respectively, exhibit at least a twofold difference in ancestry-specific frequencies. Moreover, 81.49% of variants with LAI information would …

Development And Extensive Sequencing Of A Broadly-Consented Genome In A Bottle Matched Tumor-Normal Pair, Jennifer H Mcdaniel, Vaidehi Patel, Nathan D Olson, Hua-Jun He, Zhiyong He, Kenneth D Cole, Alexander A Gooden, Anthony Schmitt, Kristin Sikkink, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Harsha Doddapaneni, Shalini N Jhangiani, Donna M Muzny, Marie-Claude Gingras, Heer Mehta, Sairam Behera, Luis F Paulin, Alex R Hastie, Hung-Chun Yu, Victor Weigman, Alison Rojas, Katie Kennedy, Jamie Remington, Isai Salas-González, Mitch Sudkamp, Kelly Wiseman, Bryan R Lajoie, Shawn Levy, Miten Jain, Stuart Akeson, Giuseppe Narzisi, Zoe Steinsnyder, Catherine Reeves, Jennifer Shelton, Sarah B Kingan, Christine Lambert, Primo Baybayan, Aaron M Wenger, Ian J Mclaughlin, Aaron Adamson, Christopher Kingsley, Melanie Wescott, Young Kim, Benedict Paten, Jimin Park, Ivo Violich, Karen H Miga, Joshua Gardner, Brandy Mcnulty, Gail L Rosen, Rajiv Mccoy, Francesco Brundu, Erfan Sayyari, Konrad Scheffler, Sean Truong, Severine Catreux, Lesley Chapman Hannah, Doron Lipson, Hila Benjamin, Nika Iremadze, Ilya Soifer, Gat Krieger, Stephen Eacker, Mary Wood, Erin Cross, Greg Husar, Stephen Gross, Michael Vernich, Mikhail Kolmogorov, Tanveer Ahmad, Ayse G Keskus, Asher Bryant, Francoise Thibaud-Nissen, Jonathan Trow, Jacqueline Proszynski, Jeremy Wain Hirschberg, Krista Ryon, Christopher E Mason, Mital S Bhakta, J Zachary Sanborn, Elizabeth M Munding, Justin Wagner, Chunlin Xiao, Andrew S Liss, Justin M Zook

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The Genome in a Bottle Consortium (GIAB), hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is developing new matched tumor-normal samples, the first explicitly consented for public dissemination of genomic data and cell lines. Here, we describe a comprehensive genomic dataset from the first individual, HG008, including DNA from an adherent, epithelial-like pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tumor cell line and matched normal cells from duodenal and pancreatic tissues. Data for the tumor-normal matched samples comes from seventeen distinct state-of-the-art whole genome measurement technologies, including high depth short and long-read bulk whole genome sequencing (WGS), single cell WGS, Hi-C, …

Epha4 Signaling Dysregulation Links Abnormal Locomotion And The Development Of Idiopathic Scoliosis, Lianlei Wang, Xinyu Yang, Sen Zhao, Pengfei Zheng, Wen Wen, Kexin Xu, Xi Cheng, Qing Li, Anas M Khanshour, Yoshinao Koike, Junjun Liu, Xin Fan, Nao Otomo, Zefu Chen, Yaqi Li, Lulu Li, Haibo Xie, Panpan Zhu, Xiaoxin Li, Yuchen Niu, Shengru Wang, Sen Liu, Suomao Yuan, Chikashi Terao, Ziquan Li, Shaoke Chen, Xiuli Zhao, Pengfei Liu, Jennifer E Posey, Zhihong Wu, Guixing Qiu, Disco Study Group (Deciphering Disorders Involving Scoliosis & Comorbidities), Shiro Ikegawa, James R Lupski, Jonathan J Rios, Carol A Wise, Jianguo T Zhang, Chengtian Zhao, Nan Wu

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Idiopathic scoliosis (IS) is the most common form of spinal deformity with unclear pathogenesis. In this study, we first reanalyzed the loci associated with IS, drawing upon previous studies. Subsequently, we mapped these loci to candidate genes using either location-based or function-based strategies. To further substantiate our findings, we verified the enrichment of variants within these candidate genes across several large IS cohorts encompassing Chinese, East Asian, and European populations. Consequently, we identified variants in the EPHA4 gene as compelling candidates for IS. To confirm their pathogenicity, we generated zebrafish mutants of epha4a. Remarkably, the zebrafish epha4a mutants exhibited …

Comprehensive Genome Analysis And Variant Detection At Scale Using Dragen, Sairam Behera, Severine Catreux, Massimiliano Rossi, Sean Truong, Zhuoyi Huang, Michael Ruehle, Arun Visvanath, Gavin Parnaby, Cooper Roddey, Vitor Onuchic, Andrea Finocchio, Daniel L Cameron, Adam English, Shyamal Mehtalia, James Han, Rami Mehio, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Research and medical genomics require comprehensive, scalable methods for the discovery of novel disease targets, evolutionary drivers and genetic markers with clinical significance. This necessitates a framework to identify all types of variants independent of their size or location. Here we present DRAGEN, which uses multigenome mapping with pangenome references, hardware acceleration and machine learning-based variant detection to provide insights into individual genomes, with ~30 min of computation time from raw reads to variant detection. DRAGEN outperforms current state-of-the-art methods in speed and accuracy across all variant types (single-nucleotide variations, insertions or deletions, short tandem repeats, structural variations and copy …

Mapping Mave Data For Use In Human Genomics Applications, Jeremy A Arbesfeld, Estelle Y Da, James S Stevenson, Kori Kuzma, Anika Paul, Tierra Farris, Benjamin J Capodanno, Sally B Grindstaff, Kevin Riehle, Nuno Saraiva-Agostinho, Jordan F Safer, Jonathan Casper, Maximilian Haeussler, Aleksandar Milosavljevic, Julia Foreman, Helen V Firth, Sarah E Hunt, Sumaiya Iqbal, Melissa S Cline, Alan F Rubin, Alex H Wagner

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: Experimental data from functional assays have a critical role in interpreting the impact of genetic variants. Assay data must be unambiguously mapped to a reference genome to make it accessible, but it is often reported relative to assay-specific sequences, complicating downstream use and integration of variant data across resources. To make multiplexed assays of variant effect (MAVE) data more broadly available to the research and clinical communities, the Atlas of Variant Effects Alliance mapped MAVE data from the MaveDB community database to human reference sequences, creating an extensive set of machine-readable homology mappings that are incorporated into widely used …

Closing The Gaps, And Improving Somatic Structural Variant Analysis And Benchmarking Using Chm13-T2t, Luis F Paulin, Jeremy Fan, Kieran O'Neill, Erin Pleasance, Vanessa L Porter, Steven J M Jones, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The complexities of cancer genomes are becoming more easily interpreted due to advancements in sequencing technologies and improved bioinformatic analysis. Structural variants (SVs) represent an important subset of somatic events in tumors. While the detection of SVs has been markedly improved by the development of long-read sequencing, somatic variant identification and annotation remain challenging. We hypothesized that the use of a completed human reference genome (CHM13-T2T) would improve somatic SV calling. Our findings in a tumor-normal matched benchmark sample and three patient samples show that the CHM13-T2T improves SV detection accuracy compared to GRCh38 with a notable reduction in false-positive …

A Hitchhiker’S Guide To Long-Read Genomic Analysis, Medhat Mahmoud, Daniel P Agustinho, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Over the past decade, long-read sequencing has evolved into a pivotal technology for uncovering the hidden and complex regions of the genome. Significant cost efficiency, scalability, and accuracy advancements have driven this evolution. Concurrently, novel analytical methods have emerged to harness the full potential of long reads. These advancements have enabled milestones such as the first fully completed human genome, enhanced identification and understanding of complex genomic variants, and deeper insights into the interplay between epigenetics and genomic variation. This mini-review provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in long-read DNA sequencing analysis, encompassing reference-based and de novo assembly …

Unraveling The Hidden Complexity Of Cancer Through Long-Read Sequencing, Qiuhui Li, Ayse G Keskus, Justin Wagner, Michal B Izydorczyk, Winston Timp, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Alison P Klein, Justin M Zook, Mikhail Kolmogorov, Michael C Schatz

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Cancer is fundamentally a disease of the genome, characterized by extensive genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic alterations. Most current studies predominantly use short-read sequencing, gene panels, or microarrays to explore these alterations; however, these technologies can systematically miss or misrepresent certain types of alterations, especially structural variants, complex rearrangements, and alterations within repetitive regions. Long-read sequencing is rapidly emerging as a transformative technology for cancer research by providing a comprehensive view across the genome, transcriptome, and epigenome, including the ability to detect alterations that previous technologies have overlooked. In this Perspective, we explore the current applications of long-read sequencing for both …

Genomic Balancing Act: Deciphering Dna Rearrangements In The Complex Chromosomal Aberration Involving 5p152, 2q311, And 18q2132, Zain Dardas, Dana Marafi, Ruizhi Duan, Jawid M Fatih, Omnia F El-Rashidy, Christopher M Grochowski, Claudia M B Carvalho, Shalini N Jhangiani, Weimin Bi, Haowei Du, Richard A Gibbs, Jennifer E Posey, Daniel G Calame, Maha S Zaki, James R Lupski

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Despite extensive research into the genetic underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), many clinical cases remain unresolved. We studied a female proband with a NDD, mildly dysmorphic facial features, and brain stem hypoplasia on neuroimaging. Comprehensive genomic analyses revealed a terminal 5p loss and a terminal 18q gain in the proband while a diploid copy number for chromosomes 5 and 18 in both parents. Genomic investigations in the proband identified an unbalanced translocation t(5;18) with additional genetic material from chromosome 2 (2q31.3) inserted at the breakpoint, pointing to a complex chromosomal rearrangement (CCR) involving 5p15.2, 2q31.3, and 18q21.32. Breakpoint junction analyses …

Analysis And Benchmarking Of Small And Large Genomic Variants Across Tandem Repeats, Adam C English, Egor Dolzhenko, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Sean K Mckenzie, Nathan D Olson, Wouter De Coster, Jonghun Park, Bida Gu, Justin Wagner, Michael A Eberle, Melissa Gymrek, Mark J P Chaisson, Justin M Zook, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Tandem repeats (TRs) are highly polymorphic in the human genome, have thousands of associated molecular traits and are linked to over 60 disease phenotypes. However, they are often excluded from at-scale studies because of challenges with variant calling and representation, as well as a lack of a genome-wide standard. Here, to promote the development of TR methods, we created a catalog of TR regions and explored TR properties across 86 haplotype-resolved long-read human assemblies. We curated variants from the Genome in a Bottle (GIAB) HG002 individual to create a TR dataset to benchmark existing and future TR analysis methods. We …

Long-Read Sequencing Of 945 Han Individuals Identifies Structural Variants Associated With Phenotypic Diversity And Disease Susceptibility, Jiao Gong, Huiru Sun, Kaiyuan Wang, Yanhui Zhao, Yechao Huang, Qinsheng Chen, Hui Qiao, Yang Gao, Jialin Zhao, Yunchao Ling, Ruifang Cao, Jingze Tan, Qi Wang, Yanyun Ma, Jing Li, Jingchun Luo, Sijia Wang, Jiucun Wang, Guoqing Zhang, Shuhua Xu, Feng Qian, Fang Zhou, Huiru Tang, Dali Li, Chinese Pangenome Consortium (Cpc), Fritz J Sedlazeck, Li Jin, Yuting Guan, Shaohua Fan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Genomic structural variants (SVs) are a major source of genetic diversity in humans. Here, through long-read sequencing of 945 Han Chinese genomes, we identify 111,288 SVs, including 24.56% unreported variants, many with predicted functional importance. By integrating human population-level phenotypic and multi-omics data as well as two humanized mouse models, we demonstrate the causal roles of two SVs: one SV that emerges at the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans in GSDMD for bone mineral density and one modern-human-specific SV in WWP2 impacting height, weight, fat, craniofacial phenotypes and immunity. Our results suggest that the GSDMD SV could …

Design And Implementation Of An Action Plan For Justice, Equity, Diversity, And Inclusion Within The Clinical Genome Resource, Alice B Popejoy, Deborah I Ritter, Danielle Azzariti, Jonathan S Berg, Joanna E Bulkley, Mildred Cho, Claudia Gonzaga-Jauregui, Teri E Klein, Daphne O Martschenko, Akinyemi Oni-Orisan, Erin M Ramos, Heidi L Rehm, Erin R Riggs, Matthew W Wright, Michael Yudell, Sharon E Plon, Joannella Morales

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

How might members of a large, multi-institutional research and resource consortium foster justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as central to its mission, goals, governance, and culture? These four principles, often referred to as JEDI, can be aspirational-but to be operationalized, they must be supported by concrete actions, investments, and a persistent long-term commitment to the principles themselves, which often requires self-reflection and course correction. We present here the iterative design process implemented across the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) that led to the development of an action plan to operationalize JEDI principles across three major domains, with specific deliverables and commitments …

Characterizing Features Affecting Local Ancestry Inference Performance In Admixed Populations, Jessica Honorato-Mauer, Nirav N Shah, Adam X Maihofer, Clement C Zai, Sintia Belangero, Caroline M Nievergelt, Marcos Santoro, Elizabeth G Atkinson

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

In recent years, significant efforts have been made to improve methods for genomic studies of admixed populations using local ancestry inference (LAI). Accurate LAI is crucial to ensure that downstream analyses accurately reflect the genetic ancestry of research participants. Here, we test analytic strategies for LAI to provide guidelines for optimal accuracy, focusing on admixed populations reflective of Latin America's primary continental ancestries-African (AFR), Amerindigenous (AMR), and European (EUR). Simulating linkage-disequilibrium-informed admixed haplotypes under a variety of 2- and 3-way admixture models, we implemented a standard LAI pipeline, testing the impact of reference panel composition, DNA data type, demography, and …

Dna-Binding Affinity And Specificity Determine The Phenotypic Diversity In Bcl11b-Related Disorders, Ivana Lessel, Anja Baresic, Ivan K Chinn, Jonathan May, Anu Goenka, Kate E Chandler, Jennifer E Posey, Alexandra Afenjar, Luisa Averdunk, Maria Francesca Bedeschi, Thomas Besnard, Rae Brager, Lauren Brick, Melanie Brugger, Theresa Brunet, Susan Byrne, Oscar De La Calle-Martín, Valeria Capra, Paul Cardenas, Céline Chappé, Hey J Chong, Benjamin Cogne, Erin Conboy, Heidi Cope, Thomas Courtin, Wallid Deb, Robertino Dilena, Christèle Dubourg, Magdeldin Elgizouli, Erica Fernandes, Kristi K Fitzgerald, Silvana Gangi, Jaya K George-Abraham, Muge Gucsavas-Calikoglu, Tobias B Haack, Medard Hadonou, Britta Hanker, Irina Hüning, Maria Iascone, Bertrand Isidor, Irma Järvelä, Jay J Jin, Alexander A L Jorge, Dragana Josifova, Ruta Kalinauskiene, Erik-Jan Kamsteeg, Boris Keren, Elena Kessler, Heike Kölbel, Mariya Kozenko, Christian Kubisch, Alma Kuechler, Suzanne M Leal, Juha Leppälä, Sharon M Luu, Gholson J Lyon, Suneeta Madan-Khetarpal, Margherita Mancardi, Elaine Marchi, Lakshmi Mehta, Beatriz Menendez, Chantal F Morel, Sue Moyer Harasink, Dayna-Lynn Nevay, Vincenzo Nigro, Sylvie Odent, Renske Oegema, John Pappas, Matthew T Pastore, Yezmin Perilla-Young, Konrad Platzer, Nina Powell-Hamilton, Rachel Rabin, Aisha Rekab, Raissa C Rezende, Leema Robert, Ferruccio Romano, Marcello Scala, Karin Poths, Isabelle Schrauwen, Jessica Sebastian, John Short, Richard Sidlow, Jennifer Sullivan, Katalin Szakszon, Queenie K G Tan, Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Matias Wagner, Dagmar Wieczorek, Bo Yuan, Nicole Maeding, Dirk Strunk, Amber Begtrup, Siddharth Banka, James R Lupski, Eva Tolosa, Davor Lessel

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BCL11B is a Cys2-His2 zinc-finger (C2H2-ZnF) domain-containing, DNA-binding, transcription factor with established roles in the development of various organs and tissues, primarily the immune and nervous systems. BCL11B germline variants have been associated with a variety of developmental syndromes. However, genotype-phenotype correlations along with pathophysiologic mechanisms of selected variants mostly remain elusive. To dissect these, we performed genotype-phenotype correlations of 92 affected individuals harboring a pathogenic or likely pathogenic BCL11B variant, followed by immune phenotyping, analysis of chromatin immunoprecipitation DNA-sequencing data, dual-luciferase reporter assays, and molecular modeling. These integrative analyses enabled us to define three clinical subtypes of BCL11B-related disorders. …

Orthogonal And Multiplexable Genetic Perturbations With An Engineered Prime Editor And A Diverse Rna Array, Qichen Yuan, Hongzhi Zeng, Tyler C Daniel, Qingzhuo Liu, Yongjie Yang, Emmanuel C Osikpa, Qiaochu Yang, Advaith Peddi, Liliana M Abramson, Boyang Zhang, Yong Xu, Xue Gao

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Programmable and modular systems capable of orthogonal genomic and transcriptomic perturbations are crucial for biological research and treating human genetic diseases. Here, we present the minimal versatile genetic perturbation technology (mvGPT), a flexible toolkit designed for simultaneous and orthogonal gene editing, activation, and repression in human cells. The mvGPT combines an engineered compact prime editor (PE), a fusion activator MS2-p65-HSF1 (MPH), and a drive-and-process multiplex array that produces RNAs tailored to different types of genetic perturbation. mvGPT can precisely edit human genome via PE coupled with a prime editing guide RNA and a nicking guide RNA, activate endogenous gene expression …

Semi-Supervised Machine Learning Method For Predicting Homogeneous Ancestry Groups To Assess Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium In Diverse Whole-Genome Sequencing Studies, Derek Shyr, Rounak Dey, Xihao Li, Hufeng Zhou, Eric Boerwinkle, Steve Buyske, Mark Daly, Richard A Gibbs, Ira Hall, Tara Matise, Catherine Reeves, Nathan O Stitziel, Michael Zody, Benjamin M Neale, Xihong Lin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Large-scale, multi-ethnic whole-genome sequencing (WGS) studies, such as the National Human Genome Research Institute Genome Sequencing Program's Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG), play an important role in increasing diversity for genetic research. Before performing association analyses, assessing Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) is a crucial step in quality control procedures to remove low quality variants and ensure valid downstream analyses. Diverse WGS studies contain ancestrally heterogeneous samples; however, commonly used HWE methods assume that the samples are homogeneous. Therefore, directly applying these to the whole dataset can yield statistically invalid results. To account for this heterogeneity, HWE can be tested on …

Characterization And Visualization Of Tandem Repeats At Genome Scale, Egor Dolzhenko, Adam English, Harriet Dashnow, Guilherme De Sena Brandine, Tom Mokveld, William J Rowell, Caitlin Karniski, Zev Kronenberg, Matt C Danzi, Warren A Cheung, Chengpeng Bi, Emily Farrow, Aaron Wenger, Khi Pin Chua, Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño, Trevor D Bartley, Peng Jin, David L Nelson, Stephan Zuchner, Tomi Pastinen, Aaron R Quinlan, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Michael A Eberle

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Tandem repeat (TR) variation is associated with gene expression changes and numerous rare monogenic diseases. Although long-read sequencing provides accurate full-length sequences and methylation of TRs, there is still a need for computational methods to profile TRs across the genome. Here we introduce the Tandem Repeat Genotyping Tool (TRGT) and an accompanying TR database. TRGT determines the consensus sequences and methylation levels of specified TRs from PacBio HiFi sequencing data. It also reports reads that support each repeat allele. These reads can be subsequently visualized with a companion TR visualization tool. Assessing 937,122 TRs, TRGT showed a Mendelian concordance of …

Unveiling Novel Genetic Variants In 370 Challenging Medically Relevant Genes Using The Long Read Sequencing Data Of 41 Samples From 19 Global Populations, Yanfeng Ji, Junfan Zhao, Jiao Gong, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Shaohua Fan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background: A large number of challenging medically relevant genes (CMRGs) are situated in complex or highly repetitive regions of the human genome, hindering comprehensive characterization of genetic variants using next-generation sequencing technologies. In this study, we employed long-read sequencing technology, extensively utilized in studying complex genomic regions, to characterize genetic alterations, including short variants (single nucleotide variants and short insertions and deletions) and copy number variations, in 370 CMRGs across 41 individuals from 19 global populations.

Results: Our analysis revealed high levels of genetic variants in CMRGs, with 68.73% exhibiting copy number variations and 65.20% containing short variants that may …

Accelerated Somatic Mutation Calling For Whole-Genome And Whole-Exome Sequencing Data From Heterogenous Tumor Samples, Shuangxi Ji, Tong Zhu, Ankit Sethia, Wenyi Wang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Accurate detection of somatic mutations in DNA sequencing data is a fundamental prerequisite for cancer research. Previous analytical challenges were overcome by consensus mutation calling from four to five popular callers. This, however, increases the already nontrivial computing time from individual callers. Here, we launch MuSE 2, powered by multistep parallelization and efficient memory allocation, to resolve the computing time bottleneck. MuSE 2 speeds up 50 times more than MuSE 1 and eight to 80 times more than other popular callers. Our benchmark study suggests combining MuSE 2 and the recently accelerated Strelka2 achieves high efficiency and accuracy in analyzing …

Evolution Of Chromosome-Arm Aberrations In Breast Cancer Through Genetic Network Rewiring, Elena Kuzmin, Toby M Baker, Tom Lesluyes, Jean Monlong, Kento T Abe, Paula P Coelho, Michael Schwartz, Joseph Del Corpo, Dongmei Zou, Genevieve Morin, Alain Pacis, Yang Yang, Constanza Martinez, Jarrett Barber, Hellen Kuasne, Rui Li, Mathieu Bourgey, Anne-Marie Fortier, Peter G Davison, Atilla Omeroglu, Marie-Christine Guiot, Quaid Morris, Claudia L Kleinman, Sidong Huang, Anne-Claude Gingras, Jiannis Ragoussis, Guillaume Bourque, Peter Van Loo, Morag Park

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The basal breast cancer subtype is enriched for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and displays consistent large chromosomal deletions. Here, we characterize evolution and maintenance of chromosome 4p (chr4p) loss in basal breast cancer. Analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas data shows recurrent deletion of chr4p in basal breast cancer. Phylogenetic analysis of a panel of 23 primary tumor/patient-derived xenograft basal breast cancers reveals early evolution of chr4p deletion. Mechanistically we show that chr4p loss is associated with enhanced proliferation. Gene function studies identify an unknown gene, C4orf19, within chr4p, which suppresses proliferation when overexpressed-a member of the PDCD10-GCKIII kinase module …

Parental Age Effects And Rett Syndrome, Xiaolan Fang, Lauren M Baggett, Raymond C Caylor, Alan K Percy, Jeffrey L Neul, Jane B Lane, Daniel G Glaze, Tim A Benke, Eric D Marsh, Kathleen J Motil, Judy O Barrish, Fran E Annese, Steven A Skinner

Children’s Nutrition Research Center Staff Publications

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a progressive neurodevelopmental disorder, and pathogenic Methyl-CpG-binding Protein 2 (MECP2) variants are identified in >95% of individuals with typical RTT. Most of RTT-causing variants in MECP2 are de novo and usually on the paternally inherited X chromosome. While paternal age has been reported to be associated with increased risk of genetic disorders, it is unknown whether parental age contributes to the risk of the development of RTT. Clinical data including parental age, RTT diagnostic status, and clinical severity are collected from 1226 participants with RTT and confirmed MECP2 variants. Statistical analyses are performed using Student t-test, …

Pathogen-Driven Crispr Screens Identify Trex1as A Regulator Of Dna Self-Sensing During Influenza Virus Infection, Cason R King, Yiping Liu, Katherine A Amato, Grace A Schaack, Clayton Mickelson, Autumn E Sanders, Tony Hu, Srishti Gupta, Ryan A Langlois, Judith A Smith, Andrew Mehle

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Host:pathogen interactions dictate the outcome of infection, yet the limitations of current approaches leave large regions of this interface unexplored. Here, we develop a novel fitness-based screen that queries factors important during the middle to late stages of infection. This is achieved by engineering influenza virus to direct the screen by programming dCas9 to modulate host gene expression. Our genome-wide screen for pro-viral factors identifies the cytoplasmic DNA exonuclease TREX1. TREX1 degrades cytoplasmic DNA to prevent inappropriate innate immune activation by self-DNA. We reveal that this same process aids influenza virus replication. Infection triggers release of mitochondrial DNA into the …

Genomic-Transcriptomic Evolution In Lung Cancer And Metastasis, Carlos Martínez-Ruiz, James R M Black, Clare Puttick, Mark S Hill, Jonas Demeulemeester, Elizabeth Larose Cadieux, Kerstin Thol, Thomas P Jones, Selvaraju Veeriah, Cristina Naceur-Lombardelli, Antonia Toncheva, Paulina Prymas, Andrew Rowan, Sophia Ward, Laura Cubitt, Foteini Athanasopoulou, Oriol Pich, Takahiro Karasaki, David A Moore, Roberto Salgado, Emma Colliver, Carla Castignani, Michelle Dietzen, Ariana Huebner, Maise Al Bakir, Miljana Tanić, Thomas B K Watkins, Emilia L Lim, Ali M Al-Rashed, Danny Lang, James Clements, Daniel E Cook, Rachel Rosenthal, Gareth A Wilson, Alexander M Frankell, Sophie De Carné Trécesson, Philip East, Nnennaya Kanu, Kevin Litchfield, Nicolai J Birkbak, Allan Hackshaw, Stephan Beck, Peter Van Loo, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Charles Swanton, Nicholas Mcgranahan

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Intratumour heterogeneity (ITH) fuels lung cancer evolution, which leads to immune evasion and resistance to therapy1. Here, using paired whole-exome and RNA sequencing data, we investigate intratumour transcriptomic diversity in 354 non-small cell lung cancer tumours from 347 out of the first 421 patients prospectively recruited into the TRACERx study2,3. Analyses of 947 tumour regions, representing both primary and metastatic disease, alongside 96 tumour-adjacent normal tissue samples implicate the transcriptome as a major source of phenotypic variation. Gene expression levels and ITH relate to patterns of positive and negative selection during tumour evolution. We observe frequent copy number-independent allele-specific expression …

Truvari: Refined Structural Variant Comparison Preserves Allelic Diversity, Adam C English, Vipin K Menon, Richard A Gibbs, Ginger A Metcalf, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The fundamental challenge of multi-sample structural variant (SV) analysis such as merging and benchmarking is identifying when two SVs are the same. Common approaches for comparing SVs were developed alongside technologies which produce ill-defined boundaries. As SV detection becomes more exact, algorithms to preserve this refined signal are needed. Here, we present Truvari-an SV comparison, annotation, and analysis toolkit-and demonstrate the effect of SV comparison choices by building population-level VCFs from 36 haplotype-resolved long-read assemblies. We observe over-merging from other SV merging approaches which cause up to a 2.2× inflation of allele frequency, relative to Truvari.

A Saturated Map Of Common Genetic Variants Associated With Human Height, Loïc Yengo, Sailaja Vedantam, Eirini Marouli, Julia Sidorenko, Eric Bartell, Saori Sakaue, Marielisa Graff, Anders U Eliasen, Yunxuan Jiang, Sridharan Raghavan, Jenkai Miao, Joshua D Arias, Sarah E Graham, Ronen E Mukamel, Cassandra N Spracklen, Xianyong Yin, Shyh-Huei Chen, Teresa Ferreira, Heather H Highland, Yingjie Ji, Tugce Karaderi, Kuang Lin, Kreete Lüll, Deborah E Malden, Carolina Medina-Gomez, Moara Machado, Amy Moore, Sina Rüeger, Xueling Sim, Scott Vrieze, Tarunveer S Ahluwalia, Masato Akiyama, Matthew A Allison, Marcus Alvarez, Mette K Andersen, Alireza Ani, Vivek Appadurai, Liubov Arbeeva, Seema Bhaskar, Lawrence F Bielak, Sailalitha Bollepalli, Lori L Bonnycastle, Jette Bork-Jensen, Jonathan P Bradfield, Yuki Bradford, Peter S Braund, Jennifer A Brody, Kristoffer S Burgdorf, Brian E Cade, Hui Cai, Qiuyin Cai, Archie Campbell, Marisa Cañadas-Garre, Eulalia Catamo, Jin-Fang Chai, Xiaoran Chai, Li-Ching Chang, Yi-Cheng Chang, Chien-Hsiun Chen, Alessandra Chesi, Seung Hoan Choi, Ren-Hua Chung, Massimiliano Cocca, Maria Pina Concas, Christian Couture, Gabriel Cuellar-Partida, Rebecca Danning, E Warwick Daw, Frauke Degenhard, Graciela E Delgado, Alessandro Delitala, Ayse Demirkan, Xuan Deng, Poornima Devineni, Alexander Dietl, Maria Dimitriou, Latchezar Dimitrov, Rajkumar Dorajoo, Arif B Ekici, Jorgen E Engmann, Zammy Fairhurst-Hunter, Aliki-Eleni Farmaki, Jessica D Faul, Juan-Carlos Fernandez-Lopez, Lukas Forer, Margherita Francescatto, Sandra Freitag-Wolf, Christian Fuchsberger, Tessel E Galesloot, Yan Gao, Zishan Gao, Frank Geller, Olga Giannakopoulou, Franco Giulianini, Anette P Gjesing, Anuj Goel, Scott D Gordon, Mathias Gorski, Jakob Grove, Xiuqing Guo, Stefan Gustafsson, Jeffrey Haessler, Thomas F Hansen, Aki S Havulinna, Simon J Haworth, Jing He, Nancy Heard-Costa, Prashantha Hebbar, George Hindy, Yuk-Lam A Ho, Edith Hofer, Elizabeth Holliday, Katrin Horn, Whitney E Hornsby, Jouke-Jan Hottenga, Hongyan Huang, Jie Huang, Alicia Huerta-Chagoya, Jennifer E Huffman, Yi-Jen Hung, Shaofeng Huo, Mi Yeong Hwang, Hiroyuki Iha, Daisuke D Ikeda, Masato Isono, Anne U Jackson, Susanne Jäger, Iris E Jansen, Ingegerd Johansson, Jost B Jonas, Anna Jonsson, Torben Jørgensen, Ioanna-Panagiota Kalafati, Masahiro Kanai, Stavroula Kanoni, Line L Kårhus, Anuradhani Kasturiratne, Tomohiro Katsuya, Takahisa Kawaguchi, Rachel L Kember, Katherine A Kentistou, Han-Na Kim, Young Jin Kim, Marcus E Kleber, Maria J Knol, Azra Kurbasic, Marie Lauzon, Phuong Le, Rodney Lea, Jong-Young Lee, Hampton L Leonard, Shengchao A Li, Xiaohui Li, Xiaoyin Li, Jingjing Liang, Honghuang Lin, Shih-Yi Lin, Jun Liu, Xueping Liu, Ken Sin Lo, Jirong Long, Laura Lores-Motta, Jian'an Luan, Valeriya Lyssenko, Leo-Pekka Lyytikäinen, Anubha Mahajan, Vasiliki Mamakou, Massimo Mangino, Ani Manichaikul, Jonathan Marten, Manuel Mattheisen, Laven Mavarani, Aaron F Mcdaid, Karina Meidtner, Tori L Melendez, Josep M Mercader, Yuri Milaneschi, Jason E Miller, Iona Y Millwood, Pashupati P Mishra, Ruth E Mitchell, Line T Møllehave, Anna Morgan, Soeren Mucha, Matthias Munz, Masahiro Nakatochi, Christopher P Nelson, Maria Nethander, Chu Won Nho, Aneta A Nielsen, Ilja M Nolte, Suraj S Nongmaithem, Raymond Noordam, Ioanna Ntalla, Teresa Nutile, Anita Pandit, Paraskevi Christofidou, Katri Pärna, Marc Pauper, Eva R B Petersen, Liselotte V Petersen, Niina Pitkänen, Ozren Polašek, Alaitz Poveda, Michael H Preuss, Saiju Pyarajan, Laura M Raffield, Hiromi Rakugi, Julia Ramirez, Asif Rasheed, Dennis Raven, Nigel W Rayner, Carlos Riveros, Rebecca Rohde, Daniela Ruggiero, Sanni E Ruotsalainen, Kathleen A Ryan, Maria Sabater-Lleal, Richa Saxena, Markus Scholz, Anoop Sendamarai, Botong Shen, Jingchunzi Shi, Jae Hun Shin, Carlo Sidore, Colleen M Sitlani, Roderick C Slieker, Roelof A J Smit, Albert V Smith, Jennifer A Smith, Laura J Smyth, Lorraine Southam, Valgerdur Steinthorsdottir, Liang Sun, Fumihiko Takeuchi, Divya Sri Priyanka Tallapragada, Kent D Taylor, Bamidele O Tayo, Catherine Tcheandjieu, Natalie Terzikhan, Paola Tesolin, Alexander Teumer, Elizabeth Theusch, Deborah J Thompson, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Paul R H J Timmers, Stella Trompet, Constance Turman, Simona Vaccargiu, Sander W Van Der Laan, Peter J Van Der Most, Jan B Van Klinken, Jessica Van Setten, Shefali S Verma, Niek Verweij, Yogasudha Veturi, Carol A Wang, Chaolong Wang, Lihua Wang, Zhe Wang, Helen R Warren, Wen Bin Wei, Ananda R Wickremasinghe, Matthias Wielscher, Kerri L Wiggins, Bendik S Winsvold, Andrew Wong, Yang Wu, Matthias Wuttke, Rui Xia, Tian Xie, Ken Yamamoto, Jingyun Yang, Jie Yao, Hannah Young, Noha A Yousri, Lei Yu, Lingyao Zeng, Weihua Zhang, Xinyuan Zhang, Jing-Hua Zhao, Wei Zhao, Wei Zhou, Martina E Zimmermann, Magdalena Zoledziewska, Linda S Adair, Hieab H H Adams, Carlos A Aguilar-Salinas, Fahd Al-Mulla, Donna K Arnett, Folkert W Asselbergs, Bjørn Olav Åsvold, John Attia, Bernhard Banas, Stefania Bandinelli, David A Bennett, Tobias Bergler, Dwaipayan Bharadwaj, Ginevra Biino, Hans Bisgaard, Eric Boerwinkle, Carsten A Böger, Klaus Bønnelykke, Dorret I Boomsma, Anders D Børglum, Judith B Borja, Claude Bouchard, Donald W Bowden, Ivan Brandslund, Ben Brumpton, Julie E Buring, Mark J Caulfield, John C Chambers, Giriraj R Chandak, Stephen J Chanock, Nish Chaturvedi, Yii-Der Ida Chen, Zhengming Chen, Ching-Yu Cheng, Ingrid E Christophersen, Marina Ciullo, John W Cole, Francis S Collins, Richard S Cooper, Miguel Cruz, Francesco Cucca, L Adrienne Cupples, Michael J Cutler, Scott M Damrauer, Thomas M Dantoft, Gert J De Borst, Lisette C P G M De Groot, Philip L De Jager, Dominique P V De Kleijn, H Janaka De Silva, George V Dedoussis, Anneke I Den Hollander, Shufa Du, Douglas F Easton, Petra J M Elders, A Heather Eliassen, Patrick T Ellinor, Sölve Elmståhl, Jeanette Erdmann, Michele K Evans, Diane Fatkin, Bjarke Feenstra, Mary F Feitosa, Luigi Ferrucci, Ian Ford, Myriam Fornage, Andre Franke, Paul W Franks, Barry I Freedman, Paolo Gasparini, Christian Gieger, Giorgia Girotto, Michael E Goddard, Yvonne M Golightly, Clicerio Gonzalez-Villalpando, Penny Gordon-Larsen, Harald Grallert, Struan F A Grant, Niels Grarup, Lyn Griffiths, Vilmundur Gudnason, Christopher Haiman, Hakon Hakonarson, Torben Hansen, Catharina A Hartman, Andrew T Hattersley, Caroline Hayward, Susan R Heckbert, Chew-Kiat Heng, Christian Hengstenberg, Alex W Hewitt, Haretsugu Hishigaki, Carel B Hoyng, Paul L Huang, Wei Huang, Steven C Hunt, Kristian Hveem, Elina Hyppönen, William G Iacono, Sahoko Ichihara, M Arfan Ikram, Carmen R Isasi, Rebecca D Jackson, Marjo-Riitta Jarvelin, Zi-Bing Jin, Karl-Heinz Jöckel, Peter K Joshi, Pekka Jousilahti, J Wouter Jukema, Mika Kähönen, Yoichiro Kamatani, Kui Dong Kang, Jaakko Kaprio, Sharon L R Kardia, Fredrik Karpe, Norihiro Kato, Frank Kee, Thorsten Kessler, Amit V Khera, Chiea Chuen Khor, Lambertus A L M Kiemeney, Bong-Jo Kim, Eung Kweon Kim, Hyung-Lae Kim, Paulus Kirchhof, Mika Kivimaki, Woon-Puay Koh, Heikki A Koistinen, Genovefa D Kolovou, Jaspal S Kooner, Charles Kooperberg, Anna Köttgen, Peter Kovacs, Adriaan Kraaijeveld, Peter Kraft, Ronald M Krauss, Meena Kumari, Zoltan Kutalik, Markku Laakso, Leslie A Lange, Claudia Langenberg, Lenore J Launer, Loic Le Marchand, Hyejin Lee, Nanette R Lee, Terho Lehtimäki, Huaixing Li, Liming Li, Wolfgang Lieb, Xu Lin, Lars Lind, Allan Linneberg, Ching-Ti Liu, Jianjun Liu, Markus Loeffler, Barry London, Steven A Lubitz, Stephen J Lye, David A Mackey, Reedik Mägi, Patrik K E Magnusson, Gregory M Marcus, Pedro Marques Vidal, Nicholas G Martin, Winfried März, Fumihiko Matsuda, Robert W Mcgarrah, Matt Mcgue, Amy Jayne Mcknight, Sarah E Medland, Dan Mellström, Andres Metspalu, Braxton D Mitchell, Paul Mitchell, Dennis O Mook-Kanamori, Andrew D Morris, Lorelei A Mucci, Patricia B Munroe, Mike A Nalls, Saman Nazarian, Amanda E Nelson, Matt J Neville, Christopher Newton-Cheh, Christopher S Nielsen, Markus M Nöthen, Claes Ohlsson, Albertine J Oldehinkel, Lorena Orozco, Katja Pahkala, Päivi Pajukanta, Colin N A Palmer, Esteban J Parra, Cristian Pattaro, Oluf Pedersen, Craig E Pennell, Brenda W J H Penninx, Louis Perusse, Annette Peters, Patricia A Peyser, David J Porteous, Danielle Posthuma, Chris Power, Peter P Pramstaller, Michael A Province, Qibin Qi, Jia Qu, Daniel J Rader, Olli T Raitakari, Sarju Ralhan, Loukianos S Rallidis, Dabeeru C Rao, Susan Redline, Dermot F Reilly, Alexander P Reiner, Sang Youl Rhee, Paul M Ridker, Michiel Rienstra, Samuli Ripatti, Marylyn D Ritchie, Dan M Roden, Frits R Rosendaal, Jerome I Rotter, Igor Rudan, Femke Rutters, Charumathi Sabanayagam, Danish Saleheen, Veikko Salomaa, Nilesh J Samani, Dharambir K Sanghera, Naveed Sattar, Börge Schmidt, Helena Schmidt, Reinhold Schmidt, Matthias B Schulze, Heribert Schunkert, Laura J Scott, Rodney J Scott, Peter Sever, Eric J Shiroma, M Benjamin Shoemaker, Xiao-Ou Shu, Eleanor M Simonsick, Mario Sims, Jai Rup Singh, Andrew B Singleton, Moritz F Sinner, J Gustav Smith, Harold Snieder, Tim D Spector, Meir J Stampfer, Klaus J Stark, David P Strachan, Leen M 'T Hart, Yasuharu Tabara, Hua Tang, Jean-Claude Tardif, Thangavel A Thanaraj, Nicholas J Timpson, Anke Tönjes, Angelo Tremblay, Tiinamaija Tuomi, Jaakko Tuomilehto, Maria-Teresa Tusié-Luna, Andre G Uitterlinden, Rob M Van Dam, Pim Van Der Harst, Nathalie Van Der Velde, Cornelia M Van Duijn, Natasja M Van Schoor, Veronique Vitart, Uwe Völker, Peter Vollenweider, Henry Völzke, Niels H Wacher-Rodarte, Mark Walker, Ya Xing Wang, Nicholas J Wareham, Richard M Watanabe, Hugh Watkins, David R Weir, Thomas M Werge, Elisabeth Widen, Lynne R Wilkens, Gonneke Willemsen, Walter C Willett, James F Wilson, Tien-Yin Wong, Jeong-Taek Woo, Alan F Wright, Jer-Yuarn Wu, Huichun Xu, Chittaranjan S Yajnik, Mitsuhiro Yokota, Jian-Min Yuan, Eleftheria Zeggini, Babette S Zemel, Wei Zheng, Xiaofeng Zhu, Joseph M Zmuda, Alan B Zonderman, John-Anker Zwart, Daniel I Chasman, Yoon Shin Cho, Iris M Heid, Mark I Mccarthy, Maggie C Y Ng, Christopher J O'Donnell, Fernando Rivadeneira, Unnur Thorsteinsdottir, Yan V Sun, E Shyong Tai, Michael Boehnke, Panos Deloukas, Anne E Justice, Cecilia M Lindgren, Ruth J F Loos, Karen L Mohlke, Kari E North, Kari Stefansson, Robin G Walters, Thomas W Winkler, Kristin L Young, Po-Ru Loh, Jian Yang, Tõnu Esko, Themistocles L Assimes, Adam Auton, Goncalo R Abecasis, Cristen J Willer, Adam E Locke, Sonja I Berndt, Guillaume Lettre, Timothy M Frayling, Yukinori Okada, Andrew R Wood, Peter M Visscher, Joel N Hirschhorn

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are predicted to collectively explain 40–50% of phenotypic variation in human height, but identifying the specific variants and associated regions requires huge sample sizes1. Here, using data from a genome-wide association study of 5.4 million individuals of diverse ancestries, we show that 12,111 independent SNPs that are significantly associated with height account for nearly all of the common SNP-based heritability. These SNPs are clustered within 7,209 non-overlapping genomic segments with a mean size of around 90 kb, covering about 21% of the genome. The density of independent associations varies across the genome and the …

Curated Variation Benchmarks For Challenging Medically Relevant Autosomal Genes, Justin Wagner, Nathan D Olson, Lindsay Harris, Jennifer Mcdaniel, Haoyu Cheng, Arkarachai Fungtammasan, Yih-Chii Hwang, Richa Gupta, Aaron M Wenger, William J Rowell, Ziad M Khan, Jesse Farek, Yiming Zhu, Aishwarya Pisupati, Medhat Mahmoud, Chunlin Xiao, Byunggil Yoo, Sayed Mohammad Ebrahim Sahraeian, Danny E Miller, David Jáspez, José M Lorenzo-Salazar, Adrián Muñoz-Barrera, Luis A Rubio-Rodríguez, Carlos Flores, Giuseppe Narzisi, Uday Shanker Evani, Wayne E Clarke, Joyce Lee, Christopher E Mason, Stephen E Lincoln, Karen H Miga, Mark T W Ebbert, Alaina Shumate, Heng Li, Chen-Shan Chin, Justin M Zook, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The repetitive nature and complexity of some medically relevant genes poses a challenge for their accurate analysis in a clinical setting. The Genome in a Bottle Consortium has provided variant benchmark sets, but these exclude nearly 400 medically relevant genes due to their repetitiveness or polymorphic complexity. Here, we characterize 273 of these 395 challenging autosomal genes using a haplotype-resolved whole-genome assembly. This curated benchmark reports over 17,000 single-nucleotide variations, 3,600 insertions and deletions and 200 structural variations each for human genome reference GRCh37 and GRCh38 across HG002. We show that false duplications in either GRCh37 or GRCh38 result in …

Unique Challenges To Diagnosing Human Herpesvirus-6 (Hhv-6) Encephalitis Following Post-Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant: A Case And Brief Review, Harrison Zhu, Amir Ali, Karrune V Woan, Eric Tam, George Yaghmour, Alan Flores, Preet Chaudhary

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

A patient with an ultimate diagnosis of human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) encephalitis developed central nervous system (CNS) symptoms 13 days after undergoing myeloablative haploidentical allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). Due to the patient's body habitus, magnetic resonance (MR) imaging was not obtained until the onset of retrograde amnesia on day +24. MR imaging and other clinical findings eliminated all skepticism of HHV-6 encephalitis and HHV-6 antivirals were initiated on day +28, leading to gradual recovery. This case demonstrates some of the factors that may complicate the diagnosis of post-alloHSCT HHV-6 encephalitis. Because HHV-6 encephalitis and viremia can occur without warning, …

Human Genes Differ By Their Uv Sensitivity Estimated Through Analysis Of Uv-Induced Silent Mutations In Melanoma, Ivan P Gorlov, Christopher I Amos, Spiridon Tsavachidis, Colin Begg, Eva Hernando, Chao Cheng, Ronglai Shen, Irene Orlow, Li Luo, Marc S Ernstoff, Joel Parker, Nancy E Thomas, Olga Y Gorlova, Marianne Berwick

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

We hypothesized that human genes differ by their sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) exposure. We used somatic mutations detected by genome-wide screens in melanoma and reported in the Catalog Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer. As a measure of UV sensitivity, we used the number of silent mutations generated by C>T transitions in pyrimidine dimers of a given transcript divided by the number of potential sites for this type of mutations in the transcript. We found that human genes varied by UV sensitivity by two orders of magnitude. We noted that the melanoma-associated tumor suppressor gene CDKN2A was among the top …