@article {774, title = {TBX6 missense variants expand the mutational spectrum in a non-Mendelian inheritance disease.}, journal = {Hum Mutat}, volume = {41}, year = {2020}, month = {2020 01}, pages = {182-195}, abstract = {

Congenital scoliosis (CS) is a birth defect with variable clinical and anatomical manifestations due to spinal malformation. The genetic etiology underlying about 10\% of CS cases in the Chinese population is compound inheritance by which the gene dosage is reduced below that of haploinsufficiency. In this genetic model, the trait manifests as a result of the combined effect of a rare variant and common pathogenic variant allele at a locus. From exome sequencing (ES) data of 523 patients in Asia and two patients in Texas, we identified six TBX6 gene-disruptive variants from 11 unrelated CS patients via ES and in vitro functional testing. The in trans mild hypomorphic allele was identified in 10 of the 11 subjects; as anticipated these 10 shared a similar spinal deformity of hemivertebrae. The remaining case has a homozygous variant in TBX6 (c.418C>T) and presents a more severe spinal deformity phenotype. We found decreased transcriptional activity and abnormal cellular localization as the molecular mechanisms for TBX6 missense loss-of-function alleles. Expanding the mutational spectrum of TBX6 pathogenic alleles enabled an increased molecular diagnostic detection rate, provided further evidence for the gene dosage-dependent genetic model underlying CS, and refined clinical classification.

}, keywords = {Alleles, Cell Line, Female, Gene Expression, Genes, Reporter, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genotype, Haplotypes, Humans, Inheritance Patterns, Male, Models, Molecular, Molecular Diagnostic Techniques, Mutation, Missense, Phenotype, Protein Conformation, Radiography, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Spine, Structure-Activity Relationship, T-Box Domain Proteins, Whole Exome Sequencing}, issn = {1098-1004}, doi = {10.1002/humu.23907}, author = {Chen, Weisheng and Lin, Jiachen and Wang, Lianlei and Li, Xiaoxin and Zhao, Sen and Liu, Jiaqi and Akdemir, Zeynep C and Zhao, Yanxue and Du, Renqian and Ye, Yongyu and Song, Xiaofei and Zhang, Yuanqiang and Yan, Zihui and Yang, Xinzhuang and Lin, Mao and Shen, Jianxiong and Wang, Shengru and Gao, Na and Yang, Ying and Liu, Ying and Li, Wenli and Liu, Jia and Zhang, Na and Yang, Xu and Xu, Yuan and Zhang, Jianguo and Delgado, Mauricio R and Posey, Jennifer E and Qiu, Guixing and Rios, Jonathan J and Liu, Pengfei and Wise, Carol A and Zhang, Feng and Wu, Zhihong and Lupski, James R and Wu, Nan} } @article {466, title = {A biallelic ANTXR1 variant expands the anthrax toxin receptor associated phenotype to tooth agenesis.}, journal = {Am J Med Genet A}, volume = {176}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 04}, pages = {1015-1022}, abstract = {

Tooth development is regulated by multiple genetic pathways, which ultimately drive the complex interactions between the oral epithelium and mesenchyme. Disruptions at any time point during this process may lead to failure of tooth development, also known as tooth agenesis (TA). TA is a common craniofacial abnormality in humans and represents the failure to develop one or more permanent teeth. Many genes and potentially subtle variants in these genes contribute to the TA phenotype. We report the clinical and genetic impact of a rare homozygous ANTXR1 variant (c.1312C>T), identified by whole exome sequencing (WES), in a consanguineous Turkish family with TA. Mutations in ANTXR1 have been associated with GAPO (growth retardation, alopecia, pseudoanodontia, and optic atrophy) syndrome and infantile hemangioma, however no clinical characteristics associated with these conditions were observed in our study family. We detected the expression of Antxr1 in oral and dental tissues of developing mouse embryos, further supporting a role for this gene in tooth development. Our findings implicate ANTXR1 as a candidate gene for isolated TA, suggest the involvement of specific hypomorphic alleles, and expand the previously known ANTXR1-associated phenotypes.

}, keywords = {Alleles, Amino Acid Substitution, Animals, Anodontia, Child, Consanguinity, Facies, Genetic Association Studies, Genotype, Humans, Male, Mice, Mutation, Neoplasm Proteins, Pedigree, Phenotype, Radiography, Receptors, Cell Surface, Whole Exome Sequencing}, issn = {1552-4833}, doi = {10.1002/ajmg.a.38625}, author = {Dinckan, Nuriye and Du, Renqian and Akdemir, Zeynep C and Bayram, Yavuz and Jhangiani, Shalini N and Doddapaneni, Harsha and Hu, Jianhong and Muzny, Donna M and Guven, Yeliz and Aktoren, Oya and Kayserili, H{\"u}lya and Boerwinkle, Eric and Gibbs, Richard A and Posey, Jennifer E and Lupski, James R and Uyguner, Zehra O and Letra, Ariadne} } @article {526, title = {The coexistence of copy number variations (CNVs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at a locus can result in distorted calculations of the significance in associating SNPs to disease.}, journal = {Hum Genet}, volume = {137}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 Jul}, pages = {553-567}, abstract = {

With the recent advance in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), disease-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variants (CNVs) have been extensively reported. Accordingly, the issue of incorrect identification of recombination events that can induce the distortion of multi-allelic or hemizygous variants has received more attention. However, the potential distorted calculation bias or significance of a detected association in a GWAS due to the coexistence of CNVs and SNPs in the same genomic region may remain under-recognized. Here we performed the association study within a congenital scoliosis (CS) cohort whose genetic etiology was recently elucidated as a compound inheritance model, including mostly one rare variant deletion CNV null allele and one common variant non-coding hypomorphic haplotype of the TBX6 gene. We demonstrated that the existence of a deletion in TBX6 led to an overestimation of the contribution of the SNPs on the hypomorphic allele. Furthermore, we generalized a model to explain the calculation bias, or distorted significance calculation for an association study, that can be {\textquoteright}induced{\textquoteright} by CNVs at a locus. Meanwhile, overlapping between the disease-associated SNPs from published GWAS and common CNVs (overlap 10\%) and pathogenic/likely pathogenic CNVs (overlap 99.69\%) was significantly higher than the random distribution (p < 1 {\texttimes} 10 and p = 0.034, respectively), indicating that such co-existence of CNV and SNV alleles might generally influence data interpretation and potential outcomes of a GWAS. We also verified and assessed the influence of colocalizing CNVs to the detection sensitivity of disease-associated SNP variant alleles in another adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) genome-wide association study. We proposed that detecting co-existent CNVs when evaluating the association signals between SNPs and disease traits could improve genetic model analyses and better integrate GWAS with robust Mendelian principles.

}, keywords = {Adolescent, Congenital Abnormalities, DNA Copy Number Variations, Female, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome, Human, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Genotype, Haplotypes, Humans, Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Scoliosis}, issn = {1432-1203}, doi = {10.1007/s00439-018-1910-3}, author = {Liu, Jiaqi and Zhou, Yangzhong and Liu, Sen and Song, Xiaofei and Yang, Xin-Zhuang and Fan, Yanhui and Chen, Weisheng and Akdemir, Zeynep Coban and Yan, Zihui and Zuo, Yuzhi and Du, Renqian and Liu, Zhenlei and Yuan, Bo and Zhao, Sen and Liu, Gang and Chen, Yixin and Zhao, Yanxue and Lin, Mao and Zhu, Qiankun and Niu, Yuchen and Liu, Pengfei and Ikegawa, Shiro and Song, You-Qiang and Posey, Jennifer E and Qiu, Guixing and Zhang, Feng and Wu, Zhihong and Lupski, James R and Wu, Nan} } @article {523, title = {Identification of likely pathogenic and known variants in TSPEAR, LAMB3, BCOR, and WNT10A in four Turkish families with tooth agenesis.}, journal = {Hum Genet}, volume = {137}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 Sep}, pages = {689-703}, abstract = {

Tooth agenesis (TA), the failure of development of one or more permanent teeth, is a common craniofacial abnormality observed in different world populations. The genetic etiology of TA is heterogeneous; more than a dozen genes have been associated with isolated or nonsyndromic TA, and more than 80 genes with syndromic forms. In this study, we applied whole exome sequencing (WES) to identify candidate genes contributing to TA in four Turkish families. Likely pathogenic variants with a low allele frequency in the general population were identified in four disease-associated genes, including two distinct variants in TSPEAR, associated with syndromic and isolated TA in one family each; a variant in LAMB3 associated with syndromic TA in one family; and a variant in BCOR plus a disease-associated WNT10A variant in one family with syndromic TA. With the notable exception of WNT10A (Tooth agenesis, selective, 4, MIM $\#$150400), the genotype-phenotype relationships described in the present cohort represent an expansion of the clinical spectrum associated with these genes: TSPEAR (Deafness, autosomal recessive 98, MIM $\#$614861), LAMB3 (Amelogenesis imperfecta, type IA, MIM $\#$104530; Epidermolysis bullosa, junctional, MIMs $\#$226700 and $\#$226650), and BCOR (Microphthalmia, syndromic 2, MIM $\#$300166). We provide evidence supporting the candidacy of these genes with TA, and propose TSPEAR as a novel nonsyndromic TA gene. Our data also suggest potential multilocus genomic variation, or mutational burden, in a single family, involving the BCOR and WNT10A loci, underscoring the complexity of the genotype-phenotype relationship in the common complex trait of TA.

}, keywords = {Anodontia, Cell Adhesion Molecules, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Genetic Markers, Humans, Male, Mutation, Pedigree, Phenotype, Proteins, Proto-Oncogene Proteins, Repressor Proteins, Turkey, Wnt Proteins}, issn = {1432-1203}, doi = {10.1007/s00439-018-1907-y}, author = {Du, Renqian and Dinckan, Nuriye and Song, Xiaofei and Coban-Akdemir, Zeynep and Jhangiani, Shalini N and Guven, Yeliz and Aktoren, Oya and Kayserili, H{\"u}lya and Petty, Lauren E and Muzny, Donna M and Below, Jennifer E and Boerwinkle, Eric and Wu, Nan and Gibbs, Richard A and Posey, Jennifer E and Lupski, James R and Letra, Ariadne and Uyguner, Z Oya} } @article {617, title = {Predicting human genes susceptible to genomic instability associated with /-mediated rearrangements.}, journal = {Genome Res}, volume = {28}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 08}, pages = {1228-1242}, abstract = {

elements, the short interspersed element numbering more than 1 million copies per human genome, can mediate the formation of copy number variants (CNVs) between substrate pairs. These /-mediated rearrangements (AAMRs) can result in pathogenic variants that cause diseases. To investigate the impact of AAMR on gene variation and human health, we first characterized s that are involved in mediating CNVs (CNV-s) and observed that these s tend to be evolutionarily younger. We then computationally generated, with the assistance of a supercomputer, a test data set consisting of 78 million pairs and predicted \~{}18\% of them are potentially susceptible to AAMR. We further determined the relative risk of AAMR in 12,074 OMIM genes using the count of predicted CNV- pairs and experimentally validated the predictions with 89 samples selected by correlating predicted hotspots with a database of CNVs identified by clinical chromosomal microarrays (CMAs) on the genomes of approximately 54,000 subjects. We fine-mapped 47 duplications, 40 deletions, and two complex rearrangements and examined a total of 52 breakpoint junctions of simple CNVs. Overall, 94\% of the candidate breakpoints were at least partially mediated. We successfully predicted all (100\%) of pairs that mediated deletions ( = 21) and achieved an 87\% positive predictive value overall when including AAMR-generated deletions and duplications. We provided a tool, AluAluCNVpredictor, for assessing AAMR hotspots and their role in human disease. These results demonstrate the utility of our predictive model and provide insights into the genomic features and molecular mechanisms underlying AAMR.

}, keywords = {Alu Elements, DNA Copy Number Variations, Gene Duplication, Genome, Human, Genomic Instability, Humans, Sequence Deletion}, issn = {1549-5469}, doi = {10.1101/gr.229401.117}, author = {Song, Xiaofei and Beck, Christine R and Du, Renqian and Campbell, Ian M and Coban-Akdemir, Zeynep and Gu, Shen and Breman, Amy M and Stankiewicz, Pawel and Ira, Grzegorz and Shaw, Chad A and Lupski, James R} }