New Hereditary Hearing Loss (hhl) Genes/mutations Identified By High Throughput Technologies In The Qatari Population

Objectives: Hereditary Hearing Loss (HHL) is a common genetic disorder accounting for at least 60% of prelingual deafness in children. The long tradition of consanguinity, which is widespread among populations of Arabian Peninsula, increases the prevalence of HHL. It is one of the most frequent causes for school failure in Qatar. GJB2 gene plays a worldwide major role in HHL recessive forms while in Qatar it has a minor role thus strongly suggesting the presence of additional causative genes. To overcome the remarkable genetic heterogeneity of HHL in Qatar population, an extremely powerful 2 steps "gene-identification strategy" was designed (Figure 1). STEP1 consists in a screening of 96 HHL genes by targeted re-sequencing (TS). Positive cases contribute to define an accurate molecular epidemiology picture while negative ones undergo STEP2, a combination of linkage studies and whole exome sequencing (WES) or directly to WES (depending on pedigree size). Methods: Ion Torrent (Life Technologies) (400X of me...