Consanguinity Mapping of Congenital Heart Disease in a South Indian Population

Parental consanguinity is a risk factor for congenital heart disease (CHD) worldwide, suggesting that a recessive inheritance model may contribute substantially to CHD. In Bangalore, India, uncle-niece and first cousin marriages are common, presenting the opportunity for an international study involving consanguinity mapping of structural CHD. We sought to explore the recessive model of CHD by conducting a genome-wide linkage analysis utilizing high-density oligonucleotide microarrays and enrolling 83 CHD probands born to unaffected consanguineous parents. exons did not reveal causative mutations in Indian probands. In addition, genotyping of the linked allele (G) in 325 U.S. CHD cases revealed neither genotypic nor allele frequency differences in varied CHD cases compared to 605 non-CHD controls. may harbor recessive mutations leading to CHD in the Indian population. Further research involving large multinational cohorts of patients with specific subtypes of CHD is needed to attempt replication of the observed linkage peak on chromosome 14. In addition, we anticipate that a targeted re-sequencing approach may complement linkage analysis in future studies of recessive mutation detection in CHD

An Evolutionary Genomic Approach to Identify Genes Involved in Human Birth Timing

Peer reviewe

High efficiency application of a mate-paired library from next-generation sequencing to postlight sequencing: Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis as a case study for microbial de novo genome assembly

Ramos RTJ, Carneiro AR, de Castro Soares S, et al. High efficiency application of a mate-paired library from next-generation sequencing to postlight sequencing: Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis as a case study for microbial de novo genome assembly. Journal of microbiological methods. 2013;95(3):441-447.With the advent of high-throughput DNA sequencing platforms, there has been a reduction in the cost and time of sequencing. With these advantages, new challenges have emerged, such as the handling of large amounts of data, quality assessment, and the assembly of short reads. Currently, benchtop high-throughput sequencers enable the genomes of prokaryotic organisms to be sequenced within two hours with a reduction in coverage compared with the SOLiD, Illumina and 454 FLX Titanium platforms, making it necessary to evaluate the efficiency of less expensive benchtop instruments for prokaryotic genomics. In the present work, we evaluate and propose a methodology for the use of the Ion Torrent PGM platform for decoding the gram-positive bacterium Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis, for which 15 complete genome sequences have already been deposited based on fragment and mate-paired libraries with a 3-kb insert size. Despite the low coverage, a single sequencing run using a mate-paired library generated 39 scaffolds after de novo assembly without data curation. This result is superior to that obtained by sequencing using libraries generated from fragments marketed by the equipment's manufacturer, as well as that observed for mate-pairs sequenced by SOLiD. The generated sequence added an extra 91kb to the genome available at NCBI

A complex chromosomal rearrangement involving chromosomes 2, 5, and X in autism spectrum disorder

Here, we describe a female patient with autism spectrum disorder and dysmorphic features that harbors a complex genetic alteration, involving a de novo balanced translocation t(2;X)(q11;q24), a 5q11 segmental trisomy and a maternally inherited isodisomy on chromosome 5. All the possibly damaging genetic effects of such alterations are discussed. In light of recent findings on ASD genetic causes, the hypothesis that all these alterations might be acting in orchestration and contributing to the phenotype is also considered. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.CNPqCNPqFAPESP/CEPIDFAPESP/CEPI

Phenotypic distributions for affected patients in both the discovery and replication cohorts.

<p>*Complex defects refer to those lesions that had elements of multiple classes or did not conform to the preceding classifications.</p

Manhattan plot of results of linkage analysis.

<p>Dashed line indicates genome wide significant LOD score of 3.3. Significant SNPs, rs1055061 and rs12433225 are represented.</p

A Transcript Finishing Initiative for Closing Gaps in the Human Transcriptome

We report the results of a transcript finishing initiative, undertaken for the purpose of identifying and characterizing novel human transcripts, in which RT-PCR was used to bridge gaps between paired EST clusters, mapped against the genomic sequence. Each pair of EST clusters selected for experimental validation was designated a transcript finishing unit (TFU). A total of 489 TFUs were selected for validation, and an overall efficiency of 43.1% was achieved. We generated a total of 59,975 bp of transcribed sequences organized into 432 exons, contributing to the definition of the structure of 211 human transcripts. The structure of several transcripts reported here was confirmed during the course of this project, through the generation of their corresponding full-length cDNA sequences. Nevertheless, for 21% of the validated TFUs, a full-length cDNA sequence is not yet available in public databases, and the structure of 69.2% of these TFUs was not correctly predicted by computer programs. The TF strategy provides a significant contribution to the definition of the complete catalog of human genes and transcripts, because it appears to be particularly useful for identification of low abundance transcripts expressed in a restricted set of tissues as well as for the delineation of gene boundaries and alternatively spliced isoforms