Identification of Recurring Tumor-Specific Somatic Mutations In Acute Myeloid Leukemia by Transcriptome Sequencing.

Genetic lesions are crucial for cancer initiation. Recently, whole genome sequencing using next generation technology was used as a systematic approach to identify mutations in genomes of various types of tumors including melanoma, lung and breast cancer as well as cytognetically normal acute myeloid leukaemia (CN-AML). Despite its technical feasibility, whole genome sequencing is still time consuming and cost intensive. As an alternative approach, here we identify tumor-specific somatic mutations by sequencing transcriptionally active genes.

Mutations were detected by comparing the transcriptome sequence of a CN-AML with the corresponding remission sample. In a single Genome Analyzer II run, we generated 4.35 Gbp of CN-AML and 5.54 of remission transcriptome sequence from the same patient. 63% of AML reads and 74% of remission reads mapped to exon regions. 10,152 genes had an average read depth of at least 7-fold and 6,989 genes an average read depth of 20 or greater in both samples. By comparing the 8,978 coding Single Nucleotide Variants (SNVs) discovered in the CN-AML sample with the remission sample, we identified 5 non-synonymous mutations specific to the tumor sample.

We found 5 tumor-specific somatic mutations. Among them is a nonsense mutation affecting the RUNX1 gene, which is a frequent mutational target in AML, and a missense mutation in the putative tumor suppressor gene TLE4, which encodes a RUNX1 interacting protein. A second missense mutation was identified in SHKBP1, which acts downstream of FLT3, a receptor tyrosine kinase mutated in about 30% of AML cases. The frequency of mutations in TLE4 and SHKBP1 in a cohort of 95 CN-AML patients was 2%.

Our study demonstrates that whole transcriptome sequencing leads to the rapid detection of recurring point mutations in the coding regions of genes relevant to malignant transformation.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.