Rare allelic forms of PRDM9 associated with childhood leukemogenesis
- Julie Hussin1,
- Daniel Sinnett1,
- Ferran Casals2,
- Youssef Idaghdour1,
- Vanessa Bruat3,
- Virginie Saillour3,
- Jasmine Healy3,
- Jean-Christophe Grenier3,
- Thibault De Malliard3,
- Jean-Francois Spinella3,
- Mathieu Lariviere3,
- Stephan Busche4,
- Greg Gibson5,
- Anna Andersson6,
- Linda Holmfeldt6,
- Jing Ma6,
- Lei Wei6,
- Jinghui Zhang6,
- Gregor Andelfinger1,
- James Downing6,
- Charles Mullighan7 and
- Phillip Awadalla1,8
- 1 University of Montreal;
- 2 Univ. Montreal;
- 3 CHU Ste-Justine;
- 4 McGill University;
- 5 Georgia Institute of Technology;
- 6 St. Jude Hospital;
- 7 St. Jude Children's Hospital
- ↵* Corresponding author; email: philip.awadalla{at}umontreal.ca
Abstract
One of the most rapidly evolving genes in humans, PRDM9, is a key determinant of the distribution of meiotic recombination events. Mutations in this meiotic-specific gene have previously been associated with male infertility in humans and recent studies suggest that PRDM9 may be involved in pathological genomic rearrangements. By studying genomes from families with children affected by B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), we characterized meiotic recombination patterns within a family with two siblings having hyperdiploid childhood ALL and observed unusual localization of maternal recombination events. The mother of the family carries a rare PRDM9 allele, potentially explaining the unusual patterns found. From exomes sequenced in 44 additional parents of children affected with B-ALL, we discovered a substantial and significant excess of rare allelic forms of PRDM9. The rare PRDM9 alleles are transmitted to the affected children in half the cases, nonetheless there remains a significant excess of rare alleles among patients relative to controls. We successfully replicated this latter observation in an independent cohort of 50 children with B-ALL, where we found an excess of rare PRDM9 alleles in aneuploid and infant B-ALL patients. PRDM9 variability in humans is thought to influence genomic instability, and these data support a potential role for PRDM9 variation in risk of acquiring aneuploidies or genomic rearrangements associated with childhood leukemogenesis.
- Received July 5, 2012.
- Accepted November 20, 2012.
- © 2012, Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
This manuscript is Open Access.
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.
