The mutational landscape in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia deciphered by whole genome sequencing.

Genomic characterization of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has identified distinct patterns of genes and pathways altered in patients with well-defined genetic aberrations. To extend the spectrum of known somatic variants in ALL, we performed whole genome and transcriptome sequencing of three B-cell precursor patients, of which one carried the t(12;21)ETV6-RUNX1 translocation and two lacked a known primary genetic aberration, and one T-ALL patient. We found that each patient had a unique genome, with a combination of well-known and previously undetected genomic aberrations. By targeted sequencing in 168 patients, we identified KMT2D and KIF1B as novel putative driver genes. We also identified a putative regulatory non-coding variant that coincided with overexpression of the growth factor MDK. Our results contribute to an increased understanding of the biological mechanisms that lead to ALL and suggest that regulatory variants may be more important for cancer development than recognized to date. The heterogeneity of the genetic aberrations in ALL renders whole genome sequencing particularly well suited for analysis of somatic variants in both research and diagnostic applications.

Accurate detection of subclonal single nucleotide variants in whole genome amplified and pooled cancer samples using HaloPlex target enrichment.

BACKGROUND: Target enrichment and resequencing is a widely used approach for identification of cancer genes and genetic variants associated with diseases. Although cost effective compared to whole genome sequencing, analysis of many samples constitutes a significant cost, which could be reduced by pooling samples before capture. Another limitation to the number of cancer samples that can be analyzed is often the amount of available tumor DNA. We evaluated the performance of whole genome amplified DNA and the power to detect subclonal somatic single nucleotide variants in non-indexed pools of cancer samples using the HaloPlex technology for target enrichment and next generation sequencing. RESULTS: We captured a set of 1528 putative somatic single nucleotide variants and germline SNPs, which were identified by whole genome sequencing, with the HaloPlex technology and sequenced to a depth of 792-1752. We found that the allele fractions of the analyzed variants are well preserved during whole genome amplification and that capture specificity or variant calling is not affected. We detected a large majority of the known single nucleotide variants present uniquely in one sample with allele fractions as low as 0.1 in non-indexed pools of up to ten samples. We also identified and experimentally validated six novel variants in the samples included in the pools. CONCLUSION: Our work demonstrates that whole genome amplified DNA can be used for target enrichment equally well as genomic DNA and that accurate variant detection is possible in non-indexed pools of cancer samples. These findings show that analysis of a large number of samples is feasible at low cost, even when only small amounts of DNA is available, and thereby significantly increases the chances of indentifying recurrent mutations in cancer samples.

Recognition of adenosine residues by the active site of poly(A)-specific ribonuclease.

Poly(A)-specific ribonuclease (PARN) is a mammalian 3'-exoribonuclease that degrades poly(A) with high specificity. To reveal mechanisms by which poly(A) is recognized by the active site of PARN, we have performed a kinetic analysis using a large repertoire of trinucleotide substrates. Our analysis demonstrated that PARN harbors specificity for adenosine recognition in its active site and that the nucleotides surrounding the scissile bond are critical for adenosine recognition. We propose that two binding pockets, which interact with the nucleotides surrounding the scissile bond, play a pivotal role in providing specificity for the recognition of adenosine residues by the active site of PARN. In addition, we show that PARN, besides poly(A), also quite efficiently degrades poly(U), approximately 10-fold less efficiently than poly(A). The poly(U)-degrading property of PARN could be of biological significance as oligo(U) tails recently have been proposed to play a role in RNA stabilization and destabilization.

Structural basis of m(7)GpppG binding to poly(A)-specific ribonuclease.

Poly(A)-specific ribonuclease (PARN) is a homodimeric, processive, and cap-interacting 3' exoribonuclease that efficiently degrades eukaryotic mRNA poly(A) tails. The crystal structure of a C-terminally truncated PARN in complex with m(7)GpppG reveals that, in one subunit, m(7)GpppG binds to a cavity formed by the RRM domain and the nuclease domain, whereas in the other subunit, it binds almost exclusively to the RRM domain. Importantly, our structural and competition data show that the cap-binding site overlaps with the active site in the nuclease domain. Mutational analysis demonstrates that residues involved in m(7)G recognition are crucial for cap-stimulated deadenylation activity, and those involved in both cap and poly(A) binding are important for catalysis. A modeled PARN, which shows that the RRM domain from one subunit and the R3H domain from the other subunit enclose the active site, provides a structural foundation for further studies to elucidate the mechanism of PARN-mediated deadenylation.