1. A Novel Triplet-Primed PCR Assay to Detect the Full Range of Trinucleotide CAG Repeats in the Huntingtin Gene (HTT)
- Author
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Sergio Fanelli, Julie R. Thibert, Annunziata Morella, Federica Consoli, Ferdinando Squitieri, Sarah N. Statt, Alessandro De Luca, and Gary J. Latham
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,congenital, hereditary, and neonatal diseases and abnormalities ,Pcr assay ,Biology ,Polymerase Chain Reaction ,Article ,Catalysis ,lcsh:Chemistry ,Cohort Studies ,novel diagnostic test ,Inorganic Chemistry ,03 medical and health sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,0302 clinical medicine ,Huntingtin Gene ,Trinucleotide Repeats ,mental disorders ,Genotype ,Htt gene ,Humans ,Pediatric HD ,Genetic Testing ,Physical and Theoretical Chemistry ,Allele ,TP-PCR ,lcsh:QH301-705.5 ,Molecular Biology ,Spectroscopy ,Genetics ,Huntingtin Protein ,Organic Chemistry ,General Medicine ,Huntington disease ,HTT-CAG repeats ,Penetrance ,nervous system diseases ,Computer Science Applications ,030104 developmental biology ,lcsh:Biology (General) ,lcsh:QD1-999 ,chemistry ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,DNA - Abstract
The expanded CAG repeat number in HTT gene causes Huntington disease (HD), which is a severe, dominant neurodegenerative illness. The accurate determination of the expanded allele size is crucial to confirm the genetic status in symptomatic and presymptomatic at-risk subjects and avoid genetic polymorphism-related false-negative diagnoses. Precise CAG repeat number determination is critical to discriminate the cutoff between unexpanded and intermediate mutable alleles (IAs, 27–35 CAG) as well as between IAs and pathological, low-penetrance alleles (i.e., 36–39 CAG repeats), and it is also critical to detect large repeat expansions causing pediatric HD variants. We analyzed the HTT-CAG repeat number of 14 DNA reference materials and of a DNA collection of 43 additional samples carrying unexpanded, IAs, low and complete penetrance alleles, including large (>, 60 repeats) and very large (>, 100 repeats) expansions using a novel triplet-primed PCR-based assay, the AmplideX PCR/CE HTT Kit. The results demonstrate that the method accurately genotypes both normal and expanded HTT-CAG repeat numbers and reveals previously undisclosed and very large CAG expansions >, 200 repeats. We also show that this technique can improve genetic test reliability and accuracy by detecting CAG expansions in samples with sequence variations within or adjacent to the repeat tract that cause allele drop-outs or inaccuracies using other PCR methods.
- Published
- 2021