Objective: Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is characterized by severe hypotonia and feeding difficulties in early infancy, followed by excessive eating and gradual development of morbid obesity in later infancy or early c...Objective: Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is characterized by severe hypotonia and feeding difficulties in early infancy, followed by excessive eating and gradual development of morbid obesity in later infancy or early childhood. Patients with PWS are often too young to manifest sufficient features or have atypical findings, making genetic testing important to confirm the diagnosis of PWS. Approximately 99% of patients with PWS have a diagnostic abnormality in the parent-specific methylation imprint within the Prader-Willi critical region (PWCR) at chromosome 15q11.2-q12. Of them, 70% have a paternal deletion; 25% have a maternal uniparental disomy (UPD); and <5% have a mutation in the imprinting center. Methods: Current techniques can identify a diagnostic abnormality, such as paternal deletion or maternal UPD for most of patients with PWS, but they are labor-intensive and cost-expensive. Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) is a novel, simple, and cost-effective technique for analysis of relative quantification in a single assay, which has recently been applied for the detection of genomic deletions, duplications, and amplifications in a variety of genes. Results: Six out of 20 patients referred for genetic diagnosis of PWS were found to have a deletion by MLPA, confirmed by FISH and DNA methylation analysis with 100% concordance. Conclusion: MLPA’s high sensitivity and specificity for deletion detection is the same as FISH or Southern blot based analysis. Additional collaborative effort for developing and validating the complete MLPA-PWS assay, for not only detecting deletion but also identifying methylation abnormality, is on going.展开更多
Objective: Spinal muscular atrophy(SMA), an autosomal recessive neuromuscular degeneration of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord and brain stem, results in one of the most common diseases with muscle fatigue a...Objective: Spinal muscular atrophy(SMA), an autosomal recessive neuromuscular degeneration of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord and brain stem, results in one of the most common diseases with muscle fatigue and atrophy. Most SMA cases including all the types are due to the homozygous deletion of at least exon 7 within the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN-1) gene. Although a “golden standard” assay (PCR with mismatch primer followed by enzyme digestion) is very reliable for the identification of homozygous SMN-1 deletion, the carrier detection of heterozygous SMN-1 deletion remains a challenge. Methods: Some PCR-based gene dosage assays or multiplex PCR allow for the determination of the copy number of SMN-1 gene to identify heterozygous deletion, but these procedures are often time consuming and available on a limited clinical basis. Recently developed MLPA (multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification) is an efficient procedure that can accurately analyze relative quantification to establish the copy number of the SMN gene. We performed a validation for simultaneous detection of homozygous SMN-1 deletions of SMA patients and heterozygous SMN-1 deletions of SMA carriers in a simple assay using a MLPA-SMA assay specific reagent. Results: Six out of 20 patients with SMA were found to have homozygous SMN-1 deletion, confirmed by the PCR/digestion assay. All 4 parents of the children with SMA had heterozygous SMN-1 deletion, confirmed by an independent relative quantitative analysis. Conclusion: MLPA provides a simple, rapid and accurate method of simultaneously detecting homozygous deletions and heterozygous deletions in a single assay for both SMN-1 and SMN-2 genes.展开更多
文摘Objective: Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is characterized by severe hypotonia and feeding difficulties in early infancy, followed by excessive eating and gradual development of morbid obesity in later infancy or early childhood. Patients with PWS are often too young to manifest sufficient features or have atypical findings, making genetic testing important to confirm the diagnosis of PWS. Approximately 99% of patients with PWS have a diagnostic abnormality in the parent-specific methylation imprint within the Prader-Willi critical region (PWCR) at chromosome 15q11.2-q12. Of them, 70% have a paternal deletion; 25% have a maternal uniparental disomy (UPD); and <5% have a mutation in the imprinting center. Methods: Current techniques can identify a diagnostic abnormality, such as paternal deletion or maternal UPD for most of patients with PWS, but they are labor-intensive and cost-expensive. Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) is a novel, simple, and cost-effective technique for analysis of relative quantification in a single assay, which has recently been applied for the detection of genomic deletions, duplications, and amplifications in a variety of genes. Results: Six out of 20 patients referred for genetic diagnosis of PWS were found to have a deletion by MLPA, confirmed by FISH and DNA methylation analysis with 100% concordance. Conclusion: MLPA’s high sensitivity and specificity for deletion detection is the same as FISH or Southern blot based analysis. Additional collaborative effort for developing and validating the complete MLPA-PWS assay, for not only detecting deletion but also identifying methylation abnormality, is on going.
文摘目的 通过多重置换扩增技术(multiple displacement amplification,MDA)与宏基因组鸟枪法测序相结合的方法研究胃癌患者和健康受试者胃内微生物的组成特征。方法 纳入2017年9月—2017年12月在医院就诊的胃腺癌患者4例,健康受试者4例,收集受试者胃液标本,经过标本预处理、DNA提取、MDA扩增提取的DNA、构建测序文库、高通量测序和生物信息学分析,研究2组受试者胃内微生物的组成特征,寻找与胃癌显著相关的菌种,并评估该方法用于胃内微生物宏基因组学研究的可行性。结果 MDA能显著扩增从胃液样本中提取的微量微生物DNA(207.27±33.17)倍,扩增后的DNA量能满足构建高质量测序文库的要求;总体上看,所有样本共鉴定出131个菌种,胃癌患者胃内菌群多样性显著低于健康受试者( P <0.01, t =4.189);在细菌门水平,受试者胃液菌群主要由变形菌门、拟杆菌门、厚壁菌门、梭杆菌门组成;优势物种的组间差异分析表明,与健康受试者相比,牙髓卟啉单胞菌、口腔链球菌、干燥奈瑟菌在胃癌患者胃液中富集( P <0.05)。结论 MDA能有效用于扩增胃内微量微生物DNA;胃癌患者的胃液菌群构成与健康人存在显著差异;部分口腔及上呼吸道条件致病菌与胃癌显著相关,是潜在的胃癌生物学标志物;通过全基因组扩增和高通量测序相结合的方法可以从菌种甚至菌株的水平上寻找与胃癌发生、发展相关的微生物。
文摘Objective: Spinal muscular atrophy(SMA), an autosomal recessive neuromuscular degeneration of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord and brain stem, results in one of the most common diseases with muscle fatigue and atrophy. Most SMA cases including all the types are due to the homozygous deletion of at least exon 7 within the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN-1) gene. Although a “golden standard” assay (PCR with mismatch primer followed by enzyme digestion) is very reliable for the identification of homozygous SMN-1 deletion, the carrier detection of heterozygous SMN-1 deletion remains a challenge. Methods: Some PCR-based gene dosage assays or multiplex PCR allow for the determination of the copy number of SMN-1 gene to identify heterozygous deletion, but these procedures are often time consuming and available on a limited clinical basis. Recently developed MLPA (multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification) is an efficient procedure that can accurately analyze relative quantification to establish the copy number of the SMN gene. We performed a validation for simultaneous detection of homozygous SMN-1 deletions of SMA patients and heterozygous SMN-1 deletions of SMA carriers in a simple assay using a MLPA-SMA assay specific reagent. Results: Six out of 20 patients with SMA were found to have homozygous SMN-1 deletion, confirmed by the PCR/digestion assay. All 4 parents of the children with SMA had heterozygous SMN-1 deletion, confirmed by an independent relative quantitative analysis. Conclusion: MLPA provides a simple, rapid and accurate method of simultaneously detecting homozygous deletions and heterozygous deletions in a single assay for both SMN-1 and SMN-2 genes.
