Back

Ensilication preserves high-molecular weight native DNA for clinical long-read sequencing

Ferrasse, A.; Mendez, R.; Gorzynski, J. E.; Reuter, C.; Carter, J.; Undiagnosed Diseases Network, ; Bernstein, J. A.; Wheeler, M. T.; Banal, J. L.; Ashley, E.

2025-11-03 genetic and genomic medicine
10.1101/2025.10.26.25338579 medRxiv
Show abstract

Long-read DNA sequencing detects genetic variants and epigenetic modifications simultaneously, but optimal preservation of molecular length and base modifications typically requires cold-chain infrastructure. This infrastructure dependence restricts genomics to well-resourced laboratories and limits field research. We show that ensilication, the encapsulation of DNA within silica matrices, preserves DNA integrity at ambient temperature equivalent to -80 {degrees}C freezing. Using Genome-in-a-Bottle (GIAB) reference samples, we show that ensilicated DNA maintains sequencing performance comparable to frozen samples, while exhibiting resistance to degradation during repeated handling and accelerated weathering conditions simulating decades of ambient storage.. In real world samples from patients, native long-read sequencing of ensilicated samples resolved a de novo variant in the segmentally duplicated GTF2I locus in one case and detected methylation episignatures diagnostic of KDM2A-related disorder in another. Ensilication removes cold-chain dependence for diagnostic-quality long-read sequencing, expanding access to molecular diagnostics in resource-limited settings.

Published in Genome Biology (predicted rank #9) · training set

Matching journals

The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.