Ethics declaration
The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Stockholm, Sweden (protocol number 2019–04746).
Written informed consent was provided by the participant and her parents to publish this paper.
DNA and RNA extraction
Genomic DNA was extracted from whole blood using the QIAsymphony instrument (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany) with the QIAsymphony DSP DNA Midi Kit (cat. no. 937255, QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany), following the manufacturer's standard protocol.
Fibroblasts were cultured from a skin biopsy in a medium composed of RPMI 1640 (1x) and Ham’s F-10 Nutrient Mixture at a 1:1 ratio, supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum, 1% L-glutamine, and 0.2% Penicillin-Streptomycin solution (5000 U/mL). The cells were harvested by mechanical scraping from the culture flask and transferred to a PAXgene tube, and RNA was extracted using the PAXgene Blood RNA Kit (Preanalytix, cat. no. 762174, QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany) on a QIAcube Connect MDx system, following the standard protocol.
The RNA was reverse transcribed to cDNA using SuperScript VILO Master Mix (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany). The RNA template and nuclease-free water were added to the master mix and incubated in a thermal cycler at 25°C for 10 minutes, 42°C for 60 minutes, and 85°C for 5 minutes, followed by a hold at 4°C. Nuclease-free water was then added, and the cDNA was stored at -20°C.
Genetic analysis
Our clinical short-read genome sequencing workflow has been previously described (30–32). To verify the inversion call, we performed targeted long-read sequencing using the PromethION platform (ONT). The target region, spanning 32.5 Mb ([GRCh38] chr15:22,874,354 − 55,370,932) encompassed the entire inversion along with a 14 Mb buffer zone upstream and downstream of the region. Libraries were prepared from 2.76 µg of genomic DNA, following the ONT protocol 'Ligation Sequencing gDNA (SQK-LSK114), with an average sample fragment size of 50,031 bp. The fragment size was estimated using Femto Pulse, following the protocol for the 'Genomic DNA 165 kb Kit.' A single PromethION R10.4 (FLO-PRO114M) flow cell was used for sequencing. The base calling was performed using the Dorado basecaller (https://github.com/nanoporetech/dorado), which was run in High Accuracy Mode (HAC). The resulting data was processed using PoorPipe (https://github.com/J35P312/poorpipe), which performs alignment using Minimap2 (33), and SV calling using Sniffles 1 (34).The inversion was manually inspected in the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV) using the hg19/GRCh37 reference genome. Repetitive elements were analyzed using RepeatMasker in the UCSC Genome Browser.
The effects on RNA were evaluated by whole-transcriptome sequencing of RNA isolated from cultured fibroblasts. Briefly, RNA was quantified and processed using a stranded, poly(A)-tailed kit (Illumina) before being subjected to 150 bp paired-end sequencing with approximately 150 million reads generated per sample on the Nova Seq X platform. The data was processed using the genomic medicine Sweden transcriptome pipeline Tomte (https://github.com/genomic-medicine-sweden/tomte). Briefly, the data was aligned to GRCh37 using STAR (35), next aberrant expression events were detected by Detection of RNA Outlier Pipeline (DROP) (36) using the default, recommended settings for OUTRIDER (37), and fusion transcripts were detected using STAR-Fusion (38).
PCR and Sanger sequencing of fusion transcripts
Primers targeting the inversion breakpoints in MEIS2 (exons 7 and 11) and NUSAP1 (exons 7 and 8) were designed (Supplementary Table S1). Breakpoint PCR was performed using AmpliTaq Gold (Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) with a master mix containing PCR buffer II (1x), MgCl2 (2 mM), dNTPs (100 µM), and AmpliTaq Gold (1 U). The PCR conditions included 10 minutes at 96°C, followed by 35 cycles of 96°C (30 sec), 62°C (30 sec), and 72°C (2 min), with a final extension at 72°C for 10 minutes.
Amplified products were detected using the FlashGel system (Lonza) with a 100 bp–3 kb DNA marker (cat. no. 57034, Lonza) and imaged on the GenoPlex system (VWR). Sanger sequencing was performed on the normal alleles of MEIS2 and NUSAP1, and the fusion transcripts MEIS2-NUSAP1 and NUSAP1-MEIS2 (Supplementary Table S1).
The PCR products were purified using Illustra ExoProStar, and the sequencing reaction was conducted with BigDye Terminator v3.1 (Applied Biosystems). Sequencing was done on an ABI 3500xL Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems, Waltham, MA, USA).