Deciphering the genetic cause of rare diseases | Variant Assessment Scientist @ Ambry Genetics

Joined February 2022
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So happy to see this out! A truly amazing story bringing answers to many many families ♥️
So excited that our paper “De novo variants in the RNU4-2 snRNA cause a frequent neurodevelopmental syndrome” is out today in @Nature nature.com/articles/s41586-0… 🧵 1/16
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We’re happy to share our preprint on mitochondrial DNA variant detection and analysis from exome and genome data for a collection of >6,500 #RareDisease families, where we uncover reported and novel pathogenic variants to resolve undiagnosed cases 🧬 1/ medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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Overall, mtDNA analysis detected a diagnostic or candidate variant for 0.4% of undiagnosed families 5/
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Thank you so much to all who contributed 🙂 especially to @AnneOtation and @HeidiRehm for their support, and everyone involved in @GREGoR_research fin/
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
📢 Check out the preprint of the GREGoR Research Consortium Marker paper! arxiv.org/abs/2412.14338 See our collaborative approach to accelerating diagnoses and diversifying genomics through data generation and sharing, innovative computational methods, and deep phenotyping.🧬
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
14 Nov 2024
Forthcoming guidance will recommend labs report VUS subclasses. We share experience of 4 labs including rates of reclassification of VUS subclasses. By highlighting VUS-high and downplaying VUS-low, this will be game-changing for dx genetic testing. buff.ly/3Cpx5RL
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
Excited to report our study in @NEJM on the discovery of deletions in a long noncoding RNA gene 🧬 (𝘊𝘏𝘈𝘚𝘌𝘙𝘙) as the cause of a newly defined human neurodevelopmental disorder 🧠. 🧵1/10 nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE…
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
20 Oct 2024
See our paper in GIM here. If you publish on variants, PLEASE use variantvalidator.org/, or even better, just submit them to ClinVar before article submission (you can request a 6 month embargo), to both validate your variant naming AND make them findable by all!

GIM's Senior Technical Editor Peter Freeman collaborated with other experts on "Standardizing variant naming in literature with VariantValidator to increase diagnostic rates", now available in Nature Genetics bit.ly/3BF83On
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
Excited to share our @Nature paper introducing constraint metrics for #mtDNA! Constraint models are powerful tools that were missing for mtDNA—until now. By applying our model to #gnomAD, we reveal which sites in mtDNA are most crucial for health & disease nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
Analysis of R-loop forming regions identifies RNU2-2P and RNU5B-1 as neurodevelopmental disorder genes medrxiv.org/cgi/content/shor… #medRxiv

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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
Use of PP3/BP4 evidence from calibrated computational prediction tools has little impact on the number of variants classified as Pathogenic or Likely Pathogenic #ACMG/AMP #variantclassification #computational predictors bit.ly/3ZtV0cn
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
Another splicesomal RNA implicated in recurrent mutations leading to neurodevelopmental disorders, and yet again based on the whole genome sequencing of patients @GenomicsEngland who consented for responsible on going research to help understand their (or their child's) disease
Mutations in the U2 snRNA gene RNU2-2P cause a severe neurodevelopmental disorder with prominent epilepsy #RareDisease #Genetics #morbidgene medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
I wrote a blog post to break down the science behind RNU4-2 in a way that families could understand: rarediseasegenomics.org/blog… Key lesson: truly lay writing is incredibly important, but also super hard (this took me a while!) If you have any RNU4-2 families, please do share!
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
12 Aug 2024
I very much enjoyed writing this @NatureNV piece on the RNU4-2 story. Please read on if you want to learn more about how a non-coding variant was discovered to be one of the most frequent causes for developmental diseases. (thx M. Rissom for sketch) nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
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Sarah Louise Stenton-Seeger retweeted
"feeling that like we’ve been on this deserted island for eight years and now all of a sudden, you’re sort of like looking around through the branches of the trees. It’s like, wait a minute, there are other people on this island" ❤️
New episode! Our guests discuss the impact of the research discovery that linked an RNU4-2 gene variant to neurodevelopmental disorders. Naimah Callachand is joined by Lindsay Pearse, Sarah Wynn and Emma Baple 🎙️ Listen via this link: genomicsengland.co.uk/podcas… @Unique_charity
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