PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Yi Dai
AU  - Pidong Li
AU  - Zhiqiang Wang
AU  - Fan Liang
AU  - Fan Yang
AU  - Li Fang
AU  - Yu Huang
AU  - Shangzhi Huang
AU  - Jiapeng Zhou
AU  - Depeng Wang
AU  - Liying Cui
AU  - Kai Wang
TI  - Single-molecule optical mapping enables quantitative measurement of D4Z4 repeats in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD)
AID  - 10.1136/jmedgenet-2019-106078
DP  - 2020 Feb 01
TA  - Journal of Medical Genetics
PG  - 109--120
VI  - 57
IP  - 2
4099  - http://jmg.bmj.com/content/57/2/109.short
4100  - http://jmg.bmj.com/content/57/2/109.full
SO  - J Med Genet2020 Feb 01; 57
AB  - Purpose Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is a common adult muscular dystrophy. Over 95% of FSHD cases are associated with contraction of the D4Z4 tandem repeat (~3.3 kb per unit) at 4q35 with a specific genomic configuration (haplotype) called 4qA. Molecular diagnosis of FSHD typically requires pulsed-field gel electrophoresis with Southern blotting. We aim to develop novel genomic and computational methods for characterising D4Z4 repeat numbers in FSHD.Methods We leveraged a single-molecule optical mapping platform that maps locations of restriction enzyme sites on high molecular weight (>150 kb) DNA molecules. We developed bioinformatics methods to address several challenges, including the differentiation of 4qA with 4qB alleles, the differentiation of 4q35 and 10q26 segmental duplications, the quantification of repeat numbers with different enzymes that may or may not have recognition sites within D4Z4 repeats. We evaluated the method on 25 human subjects (13 patients, 3 individual control subjects, 9 control subjects from 3 families) labelled by the Nb.BssSI and/or Nt.BspQI enzymes.Results We demonstrated that the method gave a direct quantitative measurement of repeat numbers on D4Z4 repeats with 4qA allelic configuration and the levels of postzygotic mosaicism. Our method had high concordance with Southern blots from several cohorts on two platforms (Bionano Saphyr and Bionano Irys), but with improved quantification of repeat numbers.Conclusion While the study is limited by small sample size, our results demonstrated that single-molecule optical mapping is a viable approach for more refined analysis on genotype-phenotype relationships in FSHD, especially when postzygotic mosaicism is present.