A novel procedure for genotyping of single nucleotide polymorphisms in trisomy with genomic DNA and the invader assay

Individuals with trisomy 21 display complex phenotypes with differing degrees of severity. Numerous reliable methods have been established to diagnose the initial trisomy in these patients, but the identification and characterization of the genetic basis of the phenotypic variation in individuals with trisomy remains challenging. To date, methods that can accurately determine genotypes in trisomic DNA samples are expensive, require specialized equipment and complicated analyses. Here we report proof-of-concept results for an Invader assay-based genotyping procedure that can deter- mine SNP genotypes in trisomic genomic DNA samples in a simple and cost-effective manner. The procedure requires only two experimental steps: a real-time measurement of the fluorescent Invader signal and analysis with a specifically designed clustering algorithm. The approach was tested using genomic DNA samples from 23 individ- uals with trisomy 21, and results were compared to genotypes previously determined with pyro- sequencing. Additional assays for 15 SNPs were tested in a set of 21 DNA samples to assess assay performance. Our method successfully identified the correct SNP genotypes for the trisomic genomic DNA samples tested, and thus provides an alterna- tive to determine SNP genotypes in trisomic DNA samples for subsequent association studies in patients with Down syndrome and other trisomies.