Germline Variant in Ctcf Links Mental Retardation to Wilms Tumor Predisposition

SNP arrays was combined with next generation sequencing (NGS) to identify an LOH in 16q together with an unreported CTCF missense variant in its zinc finger domain. CTCF is within 16q LOH. We found that germline heterozygous variant I446K became homozygous in the tumor due to a loss of heterozygosity rearrangement affecting the whole q arm on chromosome 16. Based on CTCF role in regulating the epigenetic architechture of the genome, our findings reveal CTCF variant I446K as a link between MRD21 and Wilms tumor predisposition. We compared SNP array data with sequences from Wilms tumor and germline (blood-derived) DNA