Sequence characterization of RET in 117 Chinese Hirschsprung disease families identifies a large burden of de novo and parental mosaic mutations

BACKGROUND: Hirschsprung disease (HSCR) is an inherited congenital disorder characterized by the absence of enteric ganglia in the distal part of the gut. RET is the major causative gene and contains > 80% of all known disease-causing mutations. RESULTS: To determine the incidence of RET pathogenic variants, be they Mendelian inherited, mosaic in parents or true de novo variants (DNVs) in 117 Chinese families, we used high-coverage NGS and droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) to identify 15 (12.8%) unique RET coding variants (7 are novel); one was inherited from a heterozygous unaffected mother, 11 were DNVs (73.3%), and 3 full heterozygotes were inherited from parental mosaicism (2 paternal, 1 maternal): two clinically unaffected parents were identified by NGS and confirmed by ddPCR, with mutant allele frequency (13–27%) that was the highest in hair, lowest in urine and similar in blood and saliva. An extremely low-level paternal mosaicism (0.03%) was detected by ddPCR in blood. Six positive-controls were examined to compare the mosaicism detection limit and sensitivity of NGS, amplicon-based deep sequencing and ddPCR. CONCLUSION: Our findings expand the clinical and molecular spectrum of RET variants in HSCR and reveal a high frequency of RET DNVs in the Chinese population. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary information accompanies this paper at 10.1186/s13023-019-1194-2.