Early results of next-gen cytogenetics implementation in Portugal

Background: Most approaches are insensitive to the full mutational spectrum of chromosome rearrangements associated with human developmental abnormalities. Therefore, our aim is to introduce next-generation sequencing (NGS) into clinical cytogenetics, creating a sequence-based NextGen Cytogenetics to catalyze a dramatic advancement in clinical diagnostics. Methods: Twenty families with chromosome rearrangement-associated diseases, including two prenatal (PN) cases, have been enrolled. Fourteen of these were also analyzed by NGS using large-insert paired-end libraries. Results: The majority of these cases were confirmed to be balanced reciprocal rearrangements, whereas 4 were complex chromosomal rearrangements including 1 of chromothripsis. Thus far, over 50 breakpoints were identified disrupting protein coding genes, lncRNAs, or intergenic regions, thus revealing candidate genes or genomic loci. These cases are further assessed for pathogenicity from positional effects on genes located within topological domains (TADs) containing the breakpoints using DECIPHER predictions of haploinsufficiency. In one PN case, the 16q24 breakpoint disrupts ANKRD11, etiologic in the autosomal dominant KBG syndrome (OMIM #148050), predicting an abnormal phenotype. The chromothripsis case, submitted as 46,XY,t(7;14)(q22;q32.1),inv(15)(q21.2q26.1), proved by NGS to carry two further deletions, at 3p12 (5.3 Mb) and 15q14 (488 kb), as well as an insertion of 644.4 kb from 15q14 into 3p14. The inv(15) is in fact a complex rearrangement of 15q with eight breakpoints. Conclusions: We demonstrate that NGS-based chromosomal rearrangement characterization leads to major improvements in identification of chromosomal aberrations and in prediction of clinical outcomes of postnatally and prenatally detected genomic rearrangements, and to contributions to human genome annotation.