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Objectives: The aim of this data paper is to describe a collection of 33 genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic sequencing datasets of the B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cell line REH. REH is one of the most frequently used cell lines for functional studies of pediatric ALL, and these data provide a multi-faceted characterization of its molecular features. The datasets described herein, generated with short- and long-read sequencing technologies, can both provide insights into the complex aberrant karyotype of REH, and be used as reference datasets for sequencing data quality assessment or for methods development., Data Description: This paper describes 33 datasets corresponding to 867 gigabases of raw sequencing data generated from the REH cell line. These datasets include five different approaches for whole genome sequencing (WGS) on four sequencing platforms, two RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) techniques on two different sequencing platforms, DNA methylation sequencing, and single-cell ATAC-sequencing., (© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

The homeodomain-leucine zipper (HD-Zip) transcription factor family plays vital roles in plant development and morphogenesis as well as responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. In barley, a recessive mutation in Vrs1 (HvHox1) changes two-rowed barley to six-rowed barley, which improves yield considerably. The Vrs1 gene encodes an HD-Zip subfamily I transcription factor. Phylogenetic analysis has shown that the rice HD-Zip I genes Oshox12 and Oshox14 are the closest homologues of Vrs1. Here, we show that Oshox12 and Oshox14 are ubiquitously expressed with higher levels in developing panicles. Trans-activation assays in yeast and rice protoplasts demonstrated that Oshox12 and Oshox14 can bind to a specific DNA sequence, AH1 (CAAT(A/T)ATTG), and activate reporter gene expression. Overexpression of Oshox12 and Oshox14 in rice resulted in reduced panicle length and a dwarf phenotype. In addition, Oshox14 overexpression lines showed a deficiency in panicle exsertion. Our findings suggest that Oshox12 and Oshox14 may be involved in the regulation of panicle development. This study provides a significant advancement in understanding the functions of HD-Zip transcription factors in rice., Competing Interests: At the time of the study, MW was an employee of TNO, the Netherlands (https://www.tno.nl/en/). This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, and there are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. All other authors have declared that no other competing interests exist.

To characterize the mutational patterns of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) we performed deep next generation sequencing of 872 cancer genes in 172 diagnostic and 24 relapse samples from 172 pediatric ALL patients. We found an overall greater mutational burden and more driver mutations in T-cell ALL (T-ALL) patients compared to B-cell precursor ALL (BCP-ALL) patients. In addition, the majority of the mutations in T-ALL had occurred in the original leukemic clone, while most of the mutations in BCP-ALL were subclonal. BCP-ALL patients carrying any of the recurrent translocations ETV6-RUNX1, BCR-ABL or TCF3-PBX1 harbored few mutations in driver genes compared to other BCP-ALL patients. Specifically in BCP-ALL, we identified ATRX as a novel putative driver gene and uncovered an association between somatic mutations in the Notch signaling pathway at ALL diagnosis and increased risk of relapse. Furthermore, we identified EP300, ARID1A and SH2B3 as relapse-associated genes. The genes highlighted in our study were frequently involved in epigenetic regulation, associated with germline susceptibility to ALL, and present in minor subclones at diagnosis that became dominant at relapse. We observed a high degree of clonal heterogeneity and evolution between diagnosis and relapse in both BCP-ALL and T-ALL, which could have implications for the treatment efficiency.

Background: We present a method that utilizes DNA methylation profiling for prediction of the cytogenetic subtypes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells from pediatric ALL patients. The primary aim of our study was to improve risk stratification of ALL patients into treatment groups using DNA methylation as a complement to current diagnostic methods. A secondary aim was to gain insight into the functional role of DNA methylation in ALL., Results: We used the methylation status of ~450,000 CpG sites in 546 well-characterized patients with T-ALL or seven recurrent B-cell precursor ALL subtypes to design and validate sensitive and accurate DNA methylation classifiers. After repeated cross-validation, a final classifier was derived that consisted of only 246 CpG sites. The mean sensitivity and specificity of the classifier across the known subtypes was 0.90 and 0.99, respectively. We then used DNA methylation classification to screen for subtype membership of 210 patients with undefined karyotype (normal or no result) or non-recurrent cytogenetic aberrations ('other' subtype). Nearly half (n = 106) of the patients lacking cytogenetic subgrouping displayed highly similar methylation profiles as the patients in the known recurrent groups. We verified the subtype of 20% of the newly classified patients by examination of diagnostic karyotypes, array-based copy number analysis, and detection of fusion genes by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq). Using RNA-seq data from ALL patients where cytogenetic subtype and DNA methylation classification did not agree, we discovered several novel fusion genes involving ETV6, RUNX1, and PAX5., Conclusions: Our findings indicate that DNA methylation profiling contributes to the clarification of the heterogeneity in cytogenetically undefined ALL patient groups and could be implemented as a complementary method for diagnosis of ALL. The results of our study provide clues to the origin and development of leukemic transformation. The methylation status of the CpG sites constituting the classifiers also highlight relevant biological characteristics in otherwise unclassified ALL patients.

Genomic characterization of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has identified distinct patterns of genes and pathways altered in patients with well-defined genetic aberrations. To extend the spectrum of known somatic variants in ALL, we performed whole genome and transcriptome sequencing of three B-cell precursor patients, of which one carried the t(12;21)ETV6-RUNX1 translocation and two lacked a known primary genetic aberration, and one T-ALL patient. We found that each patient had a unique genome, with a combination of well-known and previously undetected genomic aberrations. By targeted sequencing in 168 patients, we identified KMT2D and KIF1B as novel putative driver genes. We also identified a putative regulatory non-coding variant that coincided with overexpression of the growth factor MDK. Our results contribute to an increased understanding of the biological mechanisms that lead to ALL and suggest that regulatory variants may be more important for cancer development than recognized to date. The heterogeneity of the genetic aberrations in ALL renders whole genome sequencing particularly well suited for analysis of somatic variants in both research and diagnostic applications., (© 2014 WILEY PERIODICALS, INC.)

Background: Target enrichment and resequencing is a widely used approach for identification of cancer genes and genetic variants associated with diseases. Although cost effective compared to whole genome sequencing, analysis of many samples constitutes a significant cost, which could be reduced by pooling samples before capture. Another limitation to the number of cancer samples that can be analyzed is often the amount of available tumor DNA. We evaluated the performance of whole genome amplified DNA and the power to detect subclonal somatic single nucleotide variants in non-indexed pools of cancer samples using the HaloPlex technology for target enrichment and next generation sequencing., Results: We captured a set of 1528 putative somatic single nucleotide variants and germline SNPs, which were identified by whole genome sequencing, with the HaloPlex technology and sequenced to a depth of 792-1752. We found that the allele fractions of the analyzed variants are well preserved during whole genome amplification and that capture specificity or variant calling is not affected. We detected a large majority of the known single nucleotide variants present uniquely in one sample with allele fractions as low as 0.1 in non-indexed pools of up to ten samples. We also identified and experimentally validated six novel variants in the samples included in the pools., Conclusion: Our work demonstrates that whole genome amplified DNA can be used for target enrichment equally well as genomic DNA and that accurate variant detection is possible in non-indexed pools of cancer samples. These findings show that analysis of a large number of samples is feasible at low cost, even when only small amounts of DNA is available, and thereby significantly increases the chances of indentifying recurrent mutations in cancer samples.