Replicative mechanisms for CNV formation are error prone

We investigated 67 breakpoint junctions of gene copy number gains in 31 unrelated subjects. We observed a strikingly high frequency of small deletions and insertions (29%) apparently originating from polymerase slippage events, in addition to frameshifts and point mutations in homonucleotide runs (13%), at or flanking the breakpoint junctions of complex copy number variants. These single-nucleotide variants were generated concomitantly with the de novo complex genomic rearrangement (CGR) event. Our findings implicate low-fidelity, error-prone DNA polymerase activity in synthesis associated with DNA repair mechanisms as the cause of local increase in point mutation burden associated with human CGR.