Diagnostic Single Gene Analyses Beyond Sanger

Molecular testing of congenital coagulation and platelet disorders offers confirmation of clinical diagnoses, supports genetic counselling, and enables predictive and prenatal diagnosis. In some cases, genotype-phenotype correlations are important for predicting the clinical course of the disease and adaptation of individualized therapy. Until recently, genotyping has been mainly performed by Sanger sequencing. While next generation sequencing (NGS) enables the parallel analysis of multiple genes, the cost-value ratio of custom-made panels can be unfavorable for analyses of specific small genes. The aim of this study was to transfer genotyping of small genes involved in congenital coagulation and platelet disorders from Sanger sequencing to an NGS-based method. A LR-PCR approach for target enrichment of the entire genomic regions of the genes F7, F10, F11, F12, GATA1, MYH9, TUBB1 and WAS was combined with high-throughput sequencing on a MiSeq platform. NGS detected all variants that had previously been identified by Sanger sequencing. Our results demonstrate that this approach is an accurate and flexible tool for molecular genetic diagnostics of single small genes.