Diagnostics of primary immunodeficiency diseases: a sequencing capture approach

PLoS One. 2014 Dec 11;9(12):e114901. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114901. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Primary Immunodeficiencies (PID) are genetically inherited disorders characterized by defects of the immune system, leading to increased susceptibility to infection. Due to the variety of clinical symptoms and the complexity of current diagnostic procedures, accurate diagnosis of PID is often difficult in daily clinical practice. Thanks to the advent of "next generation" sequencing technologies and target enrichment methods, the development of multiplex diagnostic assays is now possible. In this study, we applied a selector-based target enrichment assay to detect disease-causing mutations in 179 known PID genes. The usefulness of this assay for molecular diagnosis of PID was investigated by sequencing DNA from 33 patients, 18 of which had at least one known causal mutation at the onset of the experiment. We were able to identify the disease causing mutations in 60% of the investigated patients, indicating that the majority of PID cases could be resolved using a targeted sequencing approach. Causal mutations identified in the unknown patient samples were located in STAT3, IGLL1, RNF168 and PGM3. Based on our results, we propose a stepwise approach for PID diagnostics, involving targeted resequencing, followed by whole transcriptome and/or whole genome sequencing if causative variants are not found in the targeted exons.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Genome, Human
  • HapMap Project
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / methods*
  • Humans
  • Immunologic Deficiency Syndromes / diagnosis
  • Immunologic Deficiency Syndromes / genetics*
  • Immunologic Deficiency Syndromes / pathology
  • Mutation / genetics*
  • Phosphoglucomutase / genetics
  • STAT3 Transcription Factor / genetics
  • Transcriptome / genetics*
  • Ubiquitin-Protein Ligases / genetics

Substances

  • STAT3 Transcription Factor
  • STAT3 protein, human
  • RNF168 protein, human
  • Ubiquitin-Protein Ligases
  • PGM3 protein, human
  • Phosphoglucomutase

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the FP7 project “European Genetic Disease Diagnostics”, with the acronym “EURO-GENE-SCAN” (project number Health-F5-2008-223293). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.