Tandem repeat (TR) expansions have been implicated in dozens of genetic diseases, including Huntington's Disease, Fragile X Syndrome, and hereditary ataxias. Furthermore, TRs have recently been implicated in a range of complex traits, including gene expression and cancer risk. While the human genome harbors hundreds of thousands of TRs, analysis of TR expansions has been mainly limited to known pathogenic loci. A major challenge is that expanded repeats are beyond the read length of most next-generation sequencing (NGS) datasets and are not profiled by existing genome-wide tools. We present GangSTR, a novel algorithm for genome-wide genotyping of both short and…
With the Sequel II System powered by Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing technology and SMRT Link v7.0, you can affordably and effectively detect structural variants (SVs), copy number variants, and large indels ranging in size from tens to thousands of base pairs. PacBio long-read whole genome sequencing comprehensively resolves variants in an individual with high precision and recall. For population genetics and pedigree studies, joint calling powers rapid discovery of common variants within a sample cohort.
With highly accurate long reads (HiFi reads) from the Sequel II System, powered by Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing technology, you can comprehensively detect variants in a human genome. HiFi reads provide high precision and recall for single nucleotide variants (SNVs), indels, structural variants (SVs), and copy number variants (CNVs), including in difficult-to-map repetitive regions.
Tandemly repeated DNA is highly mutable and causes at least 31 diseases, but it is hard to detect pathogenic repeat expansions genome-wide. Here, we report robust detection of human repeat expansions from careful alignments of long but error-prone (PacBio and nanopore) reads to a reference genome. Our method is robust to systematic sequencing errors, inexact repeats with fuzzy boundaries, and low sequencing coverage. By comparing to healthy controls, we prioritize pathogenic expansions within the top 10 out of 700,000 tandem repeats in whole genome sequencing data. This may help to elucidate the many genetic diseases whose causes remain unknown.
The etiology of more than half of all patients with X-linked intellectual disability remains elusive, despite array-based comparative genomic hybridization, whole exome or genome sequencing. Since short read massive parallel sequencing approaches do not allow the detection of larger tandem repeat expansions, we hypothesized that such expansions could be a hidden cause of X-linked intellectual disability.We selectively captured over 1800 tandem repeats on the X chromosome and characterized them by long read single molecule sequencing in 3 families with idiopathic X-linked intellectual disability. In male DNA samples, full tandem repeat length sequences were obtained for 88-93% of the targets and…
Whole-genome sequencing is increasingly used to identify Mendelian variants in clinical pipelines. These pipelines focus on single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and also structural variants, while ignoring more complex repeat sequence variants. Here, we consider the problem of genotyping Variable Number Tandem Repeats (VNTRs), composed of inexact tandem duplications of short (6-100 bp) repeating units. VNTRs span 3% of the human genome, are frequently present in coding regions, and have been implicated in multiple Mendelian disorders. Although existing tools recognize VNTR carrying sequence, genotyping VNTRs (determining repeat unit count and sequence variation) from whole-genome sequencing reads remains challenging. We describe a method,…
Recent mitochondrial phylogenomics studies have reported a sister-group relationship of the orders Capsalidea and Dactylogyridea, which is inconsistent with previous morphology- and molecular-based phylogenies. As Dactylogyridea mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) are currently represented by only one family, to improve the phylogenetic resolution, we sequenced and characterized two dactylogyridean parasites, Lamellodiscus spari and Lepidotrema longipenis, belonging to a non-represented family Diplectanidae.The L. longipenis mitogenome (15,433 bp) contains the standard 36 flatworm mitochondrial genes (atp8 is absent), whereas we failed to detect trnS1, trnC and trnG in L. spari (14,614 bp). Both mitogenomes exhibit unique gene orders (among the Monogenea), with a number…
Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) is an important crop worldwide, known as the main flavoring ingredient in beer. The diversifying brewing industry demands variation in flavors, superior process properties, and sustainable agronomics, which are the focus of advanced molecular breeding efforts in hops. Hop breeders have been limited in their ability to create strains with desirable traits, however, because of the unusual and unpredictable inheritance patterns and associated non-Mendelian genetic marker segregation. Cytogenetic analysis of meiotic chromosome behavior has also revealed conspicuous and prevalent occurrences of multiple, atypical, non-disomic chromosome complexes, including those involving autosomes in late prophase. To explore the…
In this ASHG workshop presentation, Janet Song of Stanford School of Medicine shared research on resolving a tandem repeat array implicated in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. These psychiatric diseases share a number of genomic risk variants, she noted, but scientists continue to search for a specific causal variant in the CACNA1C gene suggested by previous genome-wide association studies. SMRT Sequencing of this region in 16 individuals identified a series of 30-mer repeats, containing a total of about 50 variants. Analysis showed that 10 variants were linked to protective or risk haplotypes. Song aims to study the function of these variants…
Repetitive genome regions have been difficult to sequence, mainly because of the comparatively small size of the fragments used in assembly. Satellites or tandem repeats are very abundant in nematodes and offer an excellent playground to evaluate different assembly methods. Here, we compare the structure of satellites found in three different assemblies of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome: the original sequence obtained by Sanger sequencing, an assembly based on PacBio technology, and an assembly using Nanopore sequencing reads. In general, satellites were found in equivalent genomic regions, but the new long-read methods (PacBio and Nanopore) tended to result in longer assembled…
In this PacBio User Group Meeting presentation, Jonas Korlach and Roberto Lleras share the latest updates to the structural variation application and analysis tools.
Bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are highly heritable diseases that affect more than 3% of individuals worldwide. Genome-wide association studies have strongly and repeatedly linked risk for both of these neuropsychiatric diseases to a 100 kb interval in the third intron of the human calcium channel gene CACNA1C. However, the causative mutation is not yet known. We have identified a human-specific tandem repeat in this region that is composed of 30 bp units, often repeated hundreds of times. This large tandem repeat is unstable using standard polymerase chain reaction and bacterial cloning techniques, which may have resulted in its incorrect…
Short tandem repeat (STR) expansions have been identified as the causal DNA mutation in dozens of Mendelian diseases. Most existing tools for detecting STR variation with short reads do so within the read length and so are unable to detect the majority of pathogenic expansions. Here we present STRetch, a new genome-wide method to scan for STR expansions at all loci across the human genome. We demonstrate the use of STRetch for detecting STR expansions using short-read whole-genome sequencing data at known pathogenic loci as well as novel STR loci. STRetch is open source software, available from github.com/Oshlack/STRetch .
Explore how long-read sequencing enables solving of rare and mendelian diseases.
Structural variants (SVs) – genomic differences =50 base pairs – are few by count compared to single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and indels but include most of the base pairs that differ between two humans.