NGS-based Molecular diagnosis of 105 eyeGENE® probands with Retinitis Pigmentosa

The National Ophthalmic Disease Genotyping and Phenotyping Network (eyeGENE®) was established in an effort to facilitate basic and clinical research of human inherited eye disease. In order to provide high quality genetic testing to eyeGENE®’s enrolled patients which potentially aids clinical diagnosis and disease treatment, we carried out a pilot study and performed Next-generation sequencing (NGS) based molecular diagnosis for 105 Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) patients randomly selected from the network. A custom capture panel was designed, which incorporated 195 known retinal disease genes, including 61 known RP genes. As a result, disease-causing mutations were identified in 52 out of 105 probands (solving rate of 49.5%). A total of 82 mutations were identified, and 48 of them were novel. Interestingly, for three probands the molecular diagnosis was inconsistent with the initial clinical diagnosis, while for five probands the molecular information suggested a different inheritance model other than that assigned by the physician. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that NGS target sequencing is efficient and sufficiently precise for molecular diagnosis of a highly heterogeneous patient cohort from eyeGENE®.