The adeno-associated virus (AAV) is one of the most promising viral vectors for human gene therapy. As with any potential therapeutic system, a thorough understanding of it at the in vitro and in vivo levels is required. Over the years, numerous methods have been developed to better characterize AAV vectors. These methods have paved the way to a better understanding of the vector and, ultimately, its use in clinical applications. This review provides an up-to-date, detailed description of essential methods such as production, purification and titering and their application to characterize current AAV vectors for preclinical and clinical use.

SUMMARY While chromosomal translocations are common pathogenetic events in cancer, mechanisms that promote them are poorly understood. To elucidate translocation mechanisms in mammalian cells, we developed high throughput, genome-wide translocation sequencing (HTGTS). We employed HTGTS to identify tens of thousands of independent translocation junctions involving fixed I-SceI meganuclease-generated DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) within the c-myc oncogene or IgH locus of B lymphocytes induced for Activation Induced-cytidine Deaminase (AID)-dependent IgH class-switching. DSBs translocated very widely across the genome, but were preferentially targeted to transcribed chromosomal regions and also to numerous AID-dependent and AID-independent hotspots, with the latter being comprised mainly of cryptic genomic I-SceI targets. Comparison of translocation junctions with genome-wide nuclear run-ons revealed a marked association between transcription start sites and translocation targeting. The majority of translocation junctions were formed via end-joining with short micro-homologies. We discuss implications of our findings for diverse fields including gene therapy and cancer genomics.

The Supplemental Information files of the Gro-Seq data that were used to generate parts of Figures 5-7 and their related supplemental figures were inadvertently omitted from the initial Supplemental Information. The Gro-Seq data sets are deposited in SRA (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) under accession number SRA049000.