Differential Methylation in the GSTT1 Regulatory Region in Sudden Unexplained Death and Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy.

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a diagnostic challenge in forensic medicine. In a relatively large proportion of the SCDs, the deaths remain unexplained after autopsy. This challenge is likely caused by unknown disease mechanisms. Changes in DNA methylation have been associated with several heart diseases, but the role of DNA methylation in SCD is unknown. In this study, we investigated DNA methylation in two SCD subtypes, sudden unexplained death (SUD) and sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). We assessed DNA methylation of more than 850,000 positions in cardiac tissue from nine SUD and 14 SUDEP cases using the Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip. In total, six differently methylated regions (DMRs) between the SUD and SUDEP cases were identified. The DMRs were located in proximity to or overlapping genes encoding proteins that are a part of the glutathione S-transferase (GST) superfamily. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) showed that the DNA methylation alterations were not caused by genetic changes, while whole transcriptome sequencing (WTS) showed that DNA methylation was associated with expression levels of the GSTT1 gene. In conclusion, our results indicate that cardiac DNA methylation is similar in SUD and SUDEP, but with regional differential methylation in proximity to GST genes.

A comparative study of single nucleotide variant detection performance using three massively parallel sequencing methods.

Massively parallel sequencing (MPS) has revolutionised clinical genetics and research within human genetics by enabling the detection of variants in multiple genes in several samples at the same time. Today, multiple approaches for MPS of DNA are available, including targeted gene sequencing (TGS) panels, whole exome sequencing (WES), and whole genome sequencing (WGS). As MPS is becoming an integrated part of the work in genetic laboratories, it is important to investigate the variant detection performance of the various MPS methods. We compared the results of single nucleotide variant (SNV) detection of three MPS methods: WGS, WES, and HaloPlex target enrichment sequencing (HES) using matched DNA of 10 individuals. The detection performance was investigated in 100 genes associated with cardiomyopathies and channelopathies. The results showed that WGS overall performed better than those of WES and HES. WGS had a more uniform and widespread coverage of the investigated regions compared to WES and HES, which both had a right-skewed coverage distribution and difficulties in covering regions and genes with high GC-content. WGS and WES showed roughly the same high sensitivities for detection of SNVs, whereas HES showed a lower sensitivity due to a higher number of false negative results.