A large-scale validation of dosage analysis by robust dosage-polymerase chain reaction

Robust dosage PCR (RD-PCR) for highly accurate dosage analysis

Clinical diagnostic and epidemiological assays would benefit from accurate detection of duplications and deletions commonly missed by conventional methods of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing of individual exons. Robust dosage-PCR (RD-PCR) is a quantitative PCR method that co-amplifies a target template and an endogenous internal control (an autosomal and an X-chromosomal segment) for detection of these mutations. RD-PCR has the advantage of high accuracy and consistency, rapid assay development, widely available controls, and gene dosage over a wide dynamic range.

p53 Testing for Li-Fraumeni and Li-Fraumeni-like syndromes

Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS; OMIM #151623) is an autosomal dominant cancer predisposition syndrome characterized by early onset tumors including sarcomas, breast cancer, leukemia, brain tumors, and adrenocortical carcinoma. Li-Fraumeni syndrome is primarily attributed to germline mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene, which encodes tumor protein 53. In addition to germline p53 mutations, the p53 gene is the most commonly mutated gene in human cancers, with as much as 50% of tumors containing somatic p53 mutations. This unit provides a protocol to perform germline mutation analysis of the p53 gene. The protocol includes steps for amplification and sequencing of the entire coding region of the p53 gene (exons 2 to 11). The protocol was designed for detecting germline alterations from DNA extracted from blood; however, with some additional optimization, it could also be used to detect somatic mutations in DNA extracted from tumors.