Very Short Mitochondrial DNA Fragments and Heteroplasmy in Human Plasma.
Cell free DNA (cfDNA) has received increasing attention and has been studied in a broad range of clinical conditions. However, few studies have focused on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the cell free form. We optimized DNA isolation and sequencing library preparation protocols to better retain short DNA fragments from plasma, and applied these optimized methods to plasma samples from patients with sepsis. Our methods can retain substantially shorter DNA, resulting in an average of 11.5 fold increase in short DNA fragments yield (DNA <100bp). We report that cf-mtDNA in plasma is highly enriched in short-size cfDNA (30~60 bp). Motivated by this unique size distribution, we size-selected short cfDNA, which further increased the mtDNA recovery rate by an average of 10.4 fold. We then detected mtDNA heteroplasmy in plasma from 3 patients. In one patient who previously received bone marrow transplantation, different minor allele frequencies were observed between plasma and leukocytes at heteroplasmic sites, consistent with mixed-tissue origin for cfDNA. For the other two patients, the heteroplasmy pattern is also different between plasma and leukocyte. Our study shed new lights into the architecture of the cfDNA, and mtDNA heteroplasmy identified in plasma provides new potential for biomarker discovery.
Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Ruoyu
R
Zhang
Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY 10065, USA.
Kiichi
K
Nakahira
Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Xiaoxian
X
Guo
Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY 10065, USA.
Augustine M K
AM
Choi
Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Zhenglong
Z
Gu
D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D000073888:Cell-Free Nucleic Acids / Q000097:blood* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000097:blood* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D005787:Gene Frequency; D014644:Genetic Variation; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D007962:Leukocytes / Q000737:chemistry; D008970:Molecular Weight; D009154:Mutation; D010949:Plasma / Q000737:chemistry; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D018183:Transplantation Chimera / Q000097:blood / Q000235:genetics
D000073888:Cell-Free Nucleic Acids; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial