Sunnybrook Health Science Centre

2 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Medicine

A Protocol for Comprehensive Assessment of Bulbar Dysfunction in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

Yana Yunusova^1,2, Jordan R. Green³, Jun Wang³, Gary Pattee⁴, Lorne Zinman^2,5

¹Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, ²ALS/ MN Clinic, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, ³Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, ⁴Department of Neurology, Munroe-Meyer Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center, ⁵Department of Neurology, University of Toronto

Objective assessments of the physiological mechanisms that support speech are needed to monitor disease onset and progression in persons with ALS and to quantify treatment effects in clinical trials. In this video, we present a comprehensive, instrumentation-based protocol for quantifying speech motor performance in clinical populations.

JoVE Journal

Targeted Next-generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics Pipeline to Evaluate Genetic Determinants of Constitutional Disease

Allison A. Dilliott^1,2, Sali M.K. Farhan³, Mahdi Ghani⁴, Christine Sato⁴, Eric Liang⁵, Ming Zhang⁴, Adam D. McIntyre¹, Henian Cao¹, Lemuel Racacho^6,7, John F. Robinson¹, Michael J. Strong^1,8, Mario Masellis^9,10, Dennis E. Bulman^6,7, Ekaterina Rogaeva⁴, Anthony Lang^10,11, Carmela Tartaglia^4,10, Elizabeth Finger^12,13, Lorne Zinman⁹, John Turnbull¹⁴, Morris Freedman^10,15, Rick Swartz⁹, Sandra E. Black^9,16, Robert A. Hegele^1,2

¹Robarts Research Institute, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, ²Department of Biochemistry, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, ³Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Center for Genomic Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Stanley Centre for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, ⁴Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of Toronto, ⁵School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Queen's University, ⁶Faculty of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, University of Ottawa, ⁷CHEO Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, ⁸Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences, Western University, ⁹Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, ¹⁰Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, ¹¹Morton and Gloria Shulman Movement Disorders Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, ¹²Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, ¹³Parkwood Institute, St. Joseph's Health Care, ¹⁴Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology, McMaster University, ¹⁵Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, Baycrest Health Sciences, ¹⁶Canadian Partnership for Stroke Recovery Sunnybrook Site, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, University of Toronto

Targeted next-generation sequencing is a time- and cost-efficient approach that is becoming increasingly popular in both disease research and clinical diagnostics. The protocol described here presents the complex workflow required for sequencing and the bioinformatics process used to identify genetic variants that contribute to disease.