2021-05-14

Refinement of the clinical variant interpretation framework by statistical evidence and machine learning

Although the American College of Medical Geneticsand Genomics/Association for Molecular Pathology (ACMG/AMP)guidelines for variant interpretation are used widely in clinical ge-netics, there is room for improvement of these knowledge-basedguidelines.
2021-05-07

Sustained Neutralizing Antibodies 6 Months Following Infection in 376 Japanese COVID-19 Survivors

There is scarce evidence regarding the long-term persistence of neutralizing antibodies among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) survivors. This study determined neutralizing antibody titers (NT50) and antibodies against spike protein (SP) or nucleocapsid protein (NP) antigens approximately 6 months after the diagnosis of COVID-19.
2021-04-02

Pathogenic UBA1 variants associated with VEXAS syndrome in Japanese patients with relapsing polychondritis

UBA1 was examined in 13 of the 14 patients; 73% (8/11) of the male patients had somatic UBA1 variants (c.121A>C, c.121A>G or c.122T>C resulting in p.Met41Leu, p.Met41Val or p.Met41Thr, respectively). All the variant-positive patients had systemic symptoms, including a significantly high prevalence of skin lesions. ddPCR detected low prevalence (0.14%) of somatic variant (c.121A>C) in one female patient, which was subsequently confirmed by PNA-clamping PCR.
2021-04-01

Complete sequencing of expanded SAMD12 repeats by long-read sequencing and Cas9-mediated enrichment

A pentanucleotide TTTCA repeat insertion into a polymorphic TTTTA repeat element in SAMD12 causes benign adult familial myoclonic epilepsy. Although the precise determination of the entire SAMD12 repeat sequence is important for molecular diagnosis and research, obtaining this sequence remains challenging when using conventional genomic/genetic methods, and even short-read and long-read next-generation sequencing technologies have been insufficient.