INTRODUCTION: Objective: With the increasing use of whole-exome sequencing, one of the challenges in identifying the causal allele for a Mendelian disease is the unavailability of population-specific human genetic variation reference databases. People of Turkey were not represented in GnomAD or other publicly available large databases until recently when the first comprehensive genomic variation database, Turkish Variome (TRV), was published. This study aims to evaluate whether TRV or other publicly available large genomic variation databases can reliably be used for rare disease variant evaluation from Turkish individuals.
METHODS: Methods: We identified 60 non-disease-causing non-synonymous variants (minor allele frequencies >1%) in 58 genes that are known to be associated with idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH) from a large Turkish patient cohort. We then compared the allelic frequencies of these variants with those in various public genomic variation databases, including TRV.
RESULTS: Results: Our cohort variants showed the highest correlations with those in the TRV, Iranome, and The Greater Middle East Variome, in decreasing order.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Conclusion: These results suggest that the TRV is the appropriate database for the Turkish population for rare genomic variant evaluations. Our data also point out that variomes from geographic neighborhoods may serve as substitute references for populations devoid of their own genomic variation databases.