Whole genome sequencing (WGS) identifies almost all changes in a patient’s DNA by sequencing both the entire protein coding and the non-coding regions of the genome.

Today there are millions of patients suffering from misdiagnosed or undiagnosed genetic diseases as a result of insufficient genetic testing. Although in certain cases approaches like single gene testing, panel testing, or microarrays can identify the cause of a disease, these analyses are ultimately limited and can fail to reveal the full genetic cause. WGS, in contrast, overcomes such limitations and is the only test that can detect nearly all types of disease-causing genetic variants in one single test.

Most studies on genetic diseases have been heavily biased towards variants in gene coding regions, but this only accounts for approx. 1–2% of a patient’s entire genome. Recently, however, a growing body of studies have demonstrated that clinical WGS offers a more comprehensive analysis than WES and can provide molecular diagnosis where WES can not.1-5 Non-coding variants, such as intergenic and intronic pathogenic variants, are growing in number and importance, spanning from sequence variants to more complex structural variations.