RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Genome-Wide Disease Screening in Early Human Embryos with Primary Template-Directed Amplification JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2021.07.06.451077 DO 10.1101/2021.07.06.451077 A1 Xia, Yuntao A1 Gonzales-Pena, Veronica A1 Klein, David J A1 Luquette, Joe J A1 Puzon, Liezl A1 Siddiqui, Noor A1 Reddy, Vikrant A1 Park, Peter A1 Behr, Barry R A1 Gawad, Charles YR 2021 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/30/2021.07.06.451077.abstract AB Current preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) enables the selection of embryos based on fetal aneuploidy or the presence a small number of preselected disease-associated variants. Here we present a new approach that takes advantage of the improved genome coverage and uniformity of primary template-directed amplification (PTA) to call most early embryo genetic variants accurately and reproducibly from a preimplantation biopsy. With this approach, we identified clonal and mosaic chromosomal aneuploidy, de novo mitochondrial variants, and variants predicted to cause mendelian and non-mendelian diseases. In addition, we utilized the genome-wide information to compute polygenic risk scores for common diseases. Although numerous computational, interpretive, and ethical challenges remain, this approach establishes the technical feasibility of screening for and preventing numerous debilitating inherited diseases.Competing Interest StatementCG is a co-founder and board member of BioSkryb, which is commercializing primary template-directed amplification. NS is a founder of Orchid and BB is a Scientific Advisor to Orchid.