Chiral DNA sequences as commutable controls for clinical genomics

Abstract

Chirality is a property describing any object that is inequivalent to its mirror image. Due to its 5′–3′ directionality, a DNA sequence is distinct from a mirrored sequence arranged in reverse nucleotide-order, and is therefore chiral. A given sequence and its opposing chiral partner sequence share many properties, such as nucleotide composition and sequence entropy. Here we demonstrate that chiral DNA sequence pairs also perform equivalently during molecular and bioinformatic techniques that underpin genetic analysis, including PCR amplification, hybridization, whole-genome, target-enriched and nanopore sequencing, sequence alignment and variant detection. Given these shared properties, synthetic DNA sequences mirroring clinically relevant or analytically challenging regions of the human genome are ideal controls for clinical genomics. The addition of synthetic chiral sequences (sequins) to patient tumor samples can prevent false-positive and false-negative mutation detection to improve diagnosis. Accordingly, we propose that sequins can fulfill the need for commutable internal controls in precision medicine.

Any DNA sequence can be represented by a chiral partner sequence – an exact copy arranged in reverse nucleotide order. Here, the authors show that chiral DNA sequence pairs share important properties and show the utility of synthetic chiral sequences (sequins) as controls for clinical genomics.