Refined detection and phasing of structural aberrations in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia by linked-read whole genome sequencing (ALL_SNP)

We evaluated linked-read whole genome sequencing (WGS) for detection of structural chromosomal rearrangements in primary samples of varying DNA quality from 12 patients diagnosed with ALL. Linked-read WGS enabled precise, allele-specific, digital karyotyping at a base-pair resolution for a wide range of structural variants including complex rearrangements, aneuploidy assessment and gene deletions. Additional RNA-sequencing and copy number aberrations (CNA) data from Illumina Infinium arrays were also generated and assessed against the linked-read WGS data. RNA-sequencing data was used to support structural chromosomal rearrangements detected in the linked-read WGS data by detecting expressed fusion genes as a consequence of the rearrangements. Illumina Infinium arrays (450k array and/or SNP array) were used to assess CNA status to further support the findings in the linked-read WGS data. The processed CNA data from the primary ALL patient samples has been deposited to GEO. RNA-sequencing, linked-read WGS data, and raw SNP array data from the primary ALL patient samples will not be deposited because the patient/parent consent does not cover depositing data that may be used for large-scale determination of germline variants in a repository. The ALL samples were collected 10-20 years ago from pediatric patients aged 2-15 years, some whom have deceased. The linked-read WGS data and the RNA-sequencing data sets generated in the study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author [e-mail]. The Illumina HumanOmni2.5 Exome-8v1 SNP array was used to detect copy number changes in peditric ALL samples. LogR files with the extension ".cn" are submitted to GEO and can be visualized in IGV. 450k methylation data for these ALL samples was submitted previously in GSE49031.