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To assess factors influencing the success of whole-genome sequencing for mainstream clinical diagnosis, we sequenced 217 individuals from 156 independent cases or families across a broad spectrum of disorders in whom previous screening had identified no pathogenic variants. We quantified the number of candidate variants identified using different strategies for variant calling, filtering, annotation and prioritization. We found that jointly calling variants across samples, filtering against both local and external databases, deploying multiple annotation tools and using familial transmission above biological plausibility contributed to accuracy. Overall, we identified disease-causing variants in 21% of cases, with the proportion increasing to 34% (23/68) for mendelian disorders and 57% (8/14) in family trios. We also discovered 32 potentially clinically actionable variants in 18 genes unrelated to the referral disorder, although only 4 were ultimately considered reportable. Our results demonstrate the value of genome sequencing for routine clinical diagnosis but also highlight many outstanding challenges.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/ng.3304

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nat Genet

Publication Date

07/2015

Volume

47

Pages

717 - 726

Keywords

Base Sequence, DNA Mutational Analysis, Genetic Diseases, Inborn, Genome, Human, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing, Humans, Molecular Diagnostic Techniques, Molecular Sequence Annotation, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Sensitivity and Specificity