Evaluation and characterization of a high-resolution melting analysis kit for rapid carrier-screening test of spinal muscular atrophy

Abstract

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a common autosomal recessive disorder in humans, caused by the homozygous absence of the survival motor neuron gene 1 (SMN1). SMN2, a copy gene, influences the severity of SMA. Several assays have been described for molecular diagnosis or carrier screening of SMA. A newly developed tool based on a high-resolution melting analysis (HRMA) that enables high-throughput screening without sophisticated protocols but low costs reveals itself to be powerful. We evaluate the performance of an HRMA-based kit for a carrier-screening test of SMA that was designed to detect the substitution of a single nucleotide in SMN1 exon 7. Carriers were identified in 453 participants by quantifying the SMN1 gene and compared with denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) assay. An HRMA-based kit had a higher sensitivity (100%) for carrier testing than the DHPLC assay (93%), with the added advantage that some homozygous sequence alterations could be identified. The HRMA kit is a new, fast, and highly reliable quantitative test for the SMA molecular carrier test.

Keywords:

• High-resolution melting analysis
• SMA
• SMN1
• SMN2

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Top Bio Co. and Taiwan Advanced Nanotech Inc. for technical support.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declarations of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.