Somatic Mutations in Myometrial Cells

Over 70% of leiomyoma (LM) harbor mutations, primarily in exon 2 at c.130-131 (GG). Myometrial cells are the cell origin of leiomyoma, but the MED12 mutation status in non-neoplastic myometrial cells is unknown. In this study, we investigated the mutation burden of in myometrium. As traditional Sanger or even NGS sequencing may not be able to detect mutations that are lower than 0.1% in the testing sample, we used duplex deep sequencing analysis (DDS) to overcome this limitation. Tumor-free myometria (confirmed by pathology evaluation) were dissected, and genomic DNA from exon 2 (test) and TP53 exon 5 (control) were captured by customer-designed probe sets, followed by DDS. Notably, DDS demonstrated that myometrial cells harbored a high frequency of mutations in exon 2 and predominantly in code c.130-131. In contrast, the baseline mutations in other coding sequences of exon 2 as well as in the TP53 mutation hotspot, c.477-488 were comparably low in myometrial cells. This is the first report demonstrating a non-random accumulation of mutations at c.130-131 sites in non-neoplastic myometrial cells which provide molecular evidence of early somatic mutation events in myometrial cells. This early mutation may contribute to the cell origin for uterine LM development in women of reproductive age.