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Precision Diagnosis of Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Middle Eastern Populations

We constructed de novo genome assemblies for six family trios from diverse Middle Eastern ancestries (Sudan, Jordan, Syria, Qatar, and Afghanistan), involving probands with various unresolved neurodevelopmental conditions. We generated high-quality, nearly complete genome assemblies for trios, revealing extended novel sequence impacting known genes, novel HLA/KIR alleles, and strong signals of inbreeding, with runs of homozygosity covering large parts of individual chromosomes. We also identified potential disease variants underlying the unresolved symptoms. Also, the assemblies uncovered unique variation relative to existing references, showing enhanced mapping and variant calling of Middle Eastern genomes. The dataset available through dbGaP includes raw short (Illumina) and long (PacBio) sequencing reads and assembled haplotypes.