Test performance and clinical utility of expanded non-invasive prenatal test: Experience on 71,883 unselected routine cases from one single center.

Objective: The balance between benefits and risks of discordant outcomes makes the Genome-Wide Non-Invasive Prenatal Test (GW-NIPT) controversial. This study aims to evaluate performance and clinical utility in a wide cohort of unselected clinical cases from a single center when a standardized protocol is applied and integrated with a secondary algorithm for data interpretation.

Method: In 2 years, over 70,000 pregnant patients underwent GW-NIPT for fetal common trisomies, sex chromosome aneuploidies, rare autosomal aneuploidies, segmental abnormalities (CNVs ≥ 7 Mb) and microdeletions (CNVs < 7 Mb).

The clinical utility of genome-wide non invasive prenatal screening.

Objective: In this study, we expanded conventional cell-free fetal DNA (cfDNA)-based non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) to cover the entire genome. We aimed to compare the performance of the two tests in a large general population of pregnant women, in order to assess the clinical utility of the genome-wide screening.

Method: Genome-wide cfDNA analysis was offered to 12 114 pregnant women undergoing NIPT for common fetal aneuploidy.

Loss-of-function mutations in the SIGMAR1 gene cause distal hereditary motor neuropathy by impairing ER-mitochondria tethering and Ca2+ signalling.

Distal hereditary motor neuropathies (dHMNs) are clinically and genetically heterogeneous neurological conditions characterized by degeneration of the lower motor neurons. So far, 18 dHMN genes have been identified, however, about 80% of dHMN cases remain without a molecular diagnosis. By a combination of autozygosity mapping, identity-by-descent segment detection and whole-exome sequencing approaches, we identified two novel homozygous mutations in the SIGMAR1 gene (p.

The importance of determining the limit of detection of non-invasive prenatal testing methods.

Objective: Several non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) methods, which analyze circulating fetal cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in maternal plasma, suggest a fetal fraction (FF) ≥ 4% for a reportable result, with the assumption that fetal aneuploidies may not be detectable at lower FF. This study determined the actual limit of detection (LOD) of a massively parallel sequencing-based NIPT method and evaluated its performance in testing samples with low FF.

Method: An experimental model, involving the creation of artificial plasma mixtures with a final aneuploid FF ranging from 1% to 4%, simulated samples at different proportions of fetal cfDNA.

Functional characterization and expression analysis of novel alternative splicing isoforms of Olr1 gene during mouse embryogenesis.

LOX-1 (Lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor-1) is the primary endothelial receptor of oxidized LDL (oxLDL). Both in vitro and in vivo experiments have shown this protein to be important in the initiation of atherosclerosis and to be up-regulated by pro-atherogenic factors. Recently, it has been demonstrated that Olr1, the gene encoding Lox-1, is important for tumor growth and for maintaining the transformed state in different cancer cell lines, suggesting that it acts in a molecular pathway connecting cancer and atherosclerosis.

Hif1α down-regulation is associated with transposition of great arteries in mice treated with a retinoic acid antagonist.

Background: Congenital heart defect (CHD) account for 25% of all human congenital abnormalities. However, very few CHD-causing genes have been identified so far. A promising approach for the identification of essential cardiac regulators whose mutations may be linked to human CHD, is the molecular and genetic analysis of heart development.