Abstract
The discovery of circulating cell-free fetal DNA has profoundly transformed the landscape of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and rapidly found its way into global clinical applications. The fractional concentration of cell-free fetal DNA in plasma DNA of a pregnant woman is an important parameter for understanding and interpreting analytical results of NIPT. Thus, the accurate quantification of fetal DNA fraction is indispensable when NIPT is involved. In this protocol, we describe the bioinformatics workflow to calculate fetal DNA fraction using two programs developed by our group, which provide accurate estimation.
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Acknowledgments
P.J. is currently funded by the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITS/401/17), Hong Kong.
Conflict of Interest
P.J. is a consultant to GRAIL. P.J. has filed patents/patent applications regarding cell-free DNA molecules. The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Ni, M., Peng, X.L., Jiang, P. (2019). Bioinformatics Pipeline for Accurate Quantification of Fetal DNA Fraction in Maternal Plasma. In: Casadio, V., Salvi, S. (eds) Cell-free DNA as Diagnostic Markers. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1909. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8973-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8973-7_13
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Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-8972-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-8973-7
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