As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still scarce. Here, we present a high-coverage WGS dataset of 1,171 highly admixed elderly Brazilians from a census-based cohort, providing over 76 million variants, of which ~2 million are absent from large public databases. WGS enables identification of ~2,000 previously undescribed mobile element insertions without previous description, nearly 5 Mb of genomic segments absent from the human genome reference, and over 140 alleles from HLA genes absent from public resources. We reclassify and curate pathogenicity assertions for nearly four hundred variants in genes associated with dominantly-inherited Mendelian disorders and calculate the incidence for selected recessive disorders, demonstrating the clinical usefulness of the present study. Finally, we observe that whole-genome and HLA imputation could be significantly improved compared to available datasets since rare variation represents the largest proportion of input from WGS. These results demonstrate that even smaller sample sizes of underrepresented populations bring relevant data for genomic studies, especially when exploring analyses allowed only by WGS.

As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still scarce. Here, we present a high-coverage WGS dataset of 1,171 highly admixed elderly Brazilians from a census-based cohort, providing over 76 million variants, of which ~2 million are absent from large public databases. WGS enabled identifying ~2,000 novel mobile element insertions, nearly 5Mb of genomic segments absent from human genome reference, and over 140 novel alleles from HLA genes. We reclassified and curated nearly four hundred variant's pathogenicity assertions in genes associated with dominantly inherited Mendelian disorders and calculated the incidence for selected recessive disorders, demonstrating the clinical usefulness of the present study. Finally, we observed that whole-genome and HLA imputation could be significantly improved compared to available datasets since rare variation represents the largest proportion of input from WGS. These results demonstrate that even smaller sample sizes of underrepresented populations bring relevant data for genomic studies, especially when exploring analyses allowed only by WGS.

No abstract

As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still scarce. Here, we present a high-coverage WGS dataset of 1,171 highly admixed elderly Brazilians from a census-based cohort, providing over 76 million variants, of which ~ 2 million are absent from large public databases. WGS enabled identifying ~ 2,000 novel mobile element insertions, nearly 5 Mb of genomic segments absent from human genome reference, and over 140 novel alleles from HLA genes. We reclassified and curated nearly four hundred variant's pathogenicity assertions in genes associated with dominantly inherited Mendelian disorders and calculated the incidence for selected recessive disorders, demonstrating the clinical usefulness of the present study. Finally, we observed that whole-genome and HLA imputation could be significantly improved compared to available datasets since rare variation represents the largest proportion of input from WGS. These results demonstrate that even smaller sample sizes of underrepresented populations bring relevant data for genomic studies, especially when exploring analyses allowed only by WGS.

The original version of this Article contained an error in the title, which was previously incorrectly given as 'Whole-genome sequencing of 1,171 elderly admixed individuals from São Paulo, Brazil'. The correct version removes the word "São Paulo". This has been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.