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Updated: Jul 5, 2025

In Vivo Functional Study of Disease-associated Rare Human Variants Using Drosophila
Published on: August 20, 2019
Single variant, yet "double trouble": TSC and KBG syndrome because of a large de novo inversion
Victoria Rodrigues Alves Barbosa1,2,3, Tatiana Maroilley1,2,3, Catherine Diao1,2,3
1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.
Abstract:
Despite the advances in high-throughput sequencing, many rare disease patients remain undiagnosed. In particular, the patients with well-defined clinical phenotypes and established clinical diagnosis, yet missing or partial genetic diagnosis, may hold a clue to more complex genetic mechanisms of a disease that could be missed by available clinical tests. Here, we report a patient with a clinical diagnosis of Tuberous sclerosis, combined with unusual secondary features, but negative clinical tests including TSC1 and TSC2 Short-read whole-genome sequencing combined with advanced bioinformatics analyses were successful in uncovering a de novo pericentric 87-Mb inversion with breakpoints in TSC2 and ANKRD11, which explains the TSC clinical diagnosis, and confirms a second underlying monogenic disorder, KBG syndrome. Our findings illustrate how complex variants, such as large inversions, may be missed by clinical tests and further highlight the importance of well-defined clinical diagnoses in uncovering complex molecular mechanisms of a disease, such as complex variants and "double trouble" effects.
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