Menu
April 21, 2020

A 12-kb structural variation in progressive myoclonic epilepsy was newly identified by long-read whole-genome sequencing.

Authors: Mizuguchi, Takeshi and Suzuki, Takeshi and Abe, Chihiro and Umemura, Ayako and Tokunaga, Katsushi and Kawai, Yosuke and Nakamura, Minoru and Nagasaki, Masao and Kinoshita, Kengo and Okamura, Yasunobu and Miyatake, Satoko and Miyake, Noriko and Matsumoto, Naomichi

We report a family with progressive myoclonic epilepsy who underwent whole-exome sequencing but was negative for pathogenic variants. Similar clinical courses of a devastating neurodegenerative phenotype of two affected siblings were highly suggestive of a genetic etiology, which indicates that the survey of genetic variation by whole-exome sequencing was not comprehensive. To investigate the presence of a variant that remained unrecognized by standard genetic testing, PacBio long-read sequencing was performed. Structural variant (SV) detection using low-coverage (6×) whole-genome sequencing called 17,165 SVs (7,216 deletions and 9,949 insertions). Our SV selection narrowed down potential candidates to only five SVs (two deletions and three insertions) on the genes tagged with autosomal recessive phenotypes. Among them, a 12.4-kb deletion involving the CLN6 gene was the top candidate because its homozygous abnormalities cause neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis. This deletion included the initiation codon and was found in a GC-rich region containing multiple repetitive elements. These results indicate the presence of a causal variant in a difficult-to-sequence region and suggest that such variants that remain enigmatic after the application of current whole-exome sequencing technology could be uncovered by unbiased application of long-read whole-genome sequencing.

Journal: Journal of human genetics
DOI: 10.1038/s10038-019-0569-5
Year: 2019

Read publication

Talk with an expert

If you have a question, need to check the status of an order, or are interested in purchasing an instrument, we're here to help.