Genomics Commons^™

Super-Enhancer Hijacking Drives Ectopic Expression Of Hedgehog Pathway Ligands In Meningiomas, Mark W Youngblood, Zeynep Erson-Omay, Chang Li, Hinda Najem, Süleyman Coșkun, Evgeniya Tyrtova, Julio D Montejo, Danielle F Miyagishima, Tanyeri Barak, Sayoko Nishimura, Akdes Serin Harmancı, Victoria E Clark, Daniel Duran, Anita Huttner, Timuçin Avşar, Yasar Bayri, Johannes Schramm, Julien Boetto, Matthieu Peyre, Maximilien Riche, Roland Goldbrunner, Nduka Amankulor, Angeliki Louvi, Kaya Bilgüvar, M Necmettin Pamir, Koray Özduman, Türker Kilic, James R Knight, Matthias Simon, Craig Horbinski, Michel Kalamarides, Marco Timmer, Amy B Heimberger, Ketu Mishra-Gorur, Jennifer Moliterno, Katsuhito Yasuno, Murat Günel

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Hedgehog signaling mediates embryologic development of the central nervous system and other tissues and is frequently hijacked by neoplasia to facilitate uncontrolled cellular proliferation. Meningiomas, the most common primary brain tumor, exhibit Hedgehog signaling activation in 6.5% of cases, triggered by recurrent mutations in pathway mediators such as SMO. In this study, we find 35.6% of meningiomas that lack previously known drivers acquired various types of somatic structural variations affecting chromosomes 2q35 and 7q36.3. These cases exhibit ectopic expression of Hedgehog ligands, IHH and SHH, respectively, resulting in Hedgehog signaling activation. Recurrent tandem duplications involving IHH permit de novo chromatin …

Pls3 Missense Variants Affecting The Actin-Binding Domains Cause X-Linked Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia And Body-Wall Defects, Florence Petit, Mauro Longoni, Julie Wells, Richard S Maser, Eric L Bogenschutz, Matthew J Dysart, Hannah T M Contreras, Frederic Frénois, Barbara R Pober, Robin D Clark, Philip F Giampietro, Hilger H Ropers, Hao Hu, Maria Loscertales, Richard Wagner, Xingbin Ai, Harrison Brand, Anne-Sophie Jourdain, Marie-Ange Delrue, Brigitte Gilbert-Dussardier, Louise Devisme, Boris Keren, David J Mcculley, Lu Qiao, Rebecca Hernan, Julia Wynn, Tiana M Scott, Daniel G Calame, Zeynep Coban-Akdemir, Patricia Hernandez, Andres Hernandez-Garcia, Hagith Yonath, James R Lupski, Yufeng Shen, Wendy K Chung, Daryl A Scott, Carol J Bult, Patricia K Donahoe, Frances A High

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) is a relatively common and genetically heterogeneous structural birth defect associated with high mortality and morbidity. We describe eight unrelated families with an X-linked condition characterized by diaphragm defects, variable anterior body-wall anomalies, and/or facial dysmorphism. Using linkage analysis and exome or genome sequencing, we found that missense variants in plastin 3 (PLS3), a gene encoding an actin bundling protein, co-segregate with disease in all families. Loss-of-function variants in PLS3 have been previously associated with X-linked osteoporosis (MIM: 300910), so we used in silico protein modeling and a mouse model to address these seemingly disparate clinical …

Multi-Ancestry Genome-Wide Study Identifies Effector Genes And Druggable Pathways For Coronary Artery Calcification, Maryam Kavousi, Maxime M Bos, Hanna J Barnes, Christian L Lino Cardenas, Doris Wong, Haojie Lu, Chani J Hodonsky, Lennart P L Landsmeer, Adam W Turner, Minjung Kho, Natalie R Hasbani, Paul S De Vries, Donald W Bowden, Sandesh Chopade, Joris Deelen, Ernest Diez Benavente, Xiuqing Guo, Edith Hofer, Shih-Jen Hwang, Sharon M Lutz, Leo-Pekka Lyytikäinen, Lotte Slenders, Albert V Smith, Maggie A Stanislawski, Jessica Van Setten, Quenna Wong, Lisa R Yanek, Diane M Becker, Marian Beekman, Matthew J Budoff, Mary F Feitosa, Chris Finan, Austin T Hilliard, Sharon L R Kardia, Jason C Kovacic, Brian G Kral, Carl D Langefeld, Lenore J Launer, Shaista Malik, Firdaus A A Mohamed Hoesein, Michal Mokry, Reinhold Schmidt, Jennifer A Smith, Kent D Taylor, James G Terry, Jeroen Van Der Grond, Joyce Van Meurs, Rozemarijn Vliegenthart, Jianzhao Xu, Kendra A Young, Nuno R Zilhão, Robert Zweiker, Themistocles L Assimes, Lewis C Becker, Daniel Bos, J Jeffrey Carr, L Adrienne Cupples, Dominique P V De Kleijn, Menno De Winther, Hester M Den Ruijter, Myriam Fornage, Barry I Freedman, Vilmundur Gudnason, Aroon D Hingorani, John E Hokanson, M Arfan Ikram, Ivana Išgum, David R Jacobs, Mika Kähönen, Leslie A Lange, Terho Lehtimäki, Gerard Pasterkamp, Olli T Raitakari, Helena Schmidt, P Eline Slagboom, André G Uitterlinden, Meike W Vernooij, Joshua C Bis, Nora Franceschini, Bruce M Psaty, Wendy S Post, Jerome I Rotter, Johan L M Björkegren, Christopher J O'Donnell, Lawrence F Bielak, Patricia A Peyser, Rajeev Malhotra, Sander W Van Der Laan, Clint L Miller

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Coronary artery calcification (CAC), a measure of subclinical atherosclerosis, predicts future symptomatic coronary artery disease (CAD). Identifying genetic risk factors for CAC may point to new therapeutic avenues for prevention. Currently, there are only four known risk loci for CAC identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the general population. Here we conducted the largest multi-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis of CAC to date, which comprised 26,909 individuals of European ancestry and 8,867 individuals of African ancestry. We identified 11 independent risk loci, of which eight were new for CAC and five had not been reported for CAD. These new CAC loci …

Collagene Enables Privacy-Aware Federated And Collaborative Genomic Data Analysis, Wentao Li, Miran Kim, Kai Zhang, Han Chen, Xiaoqian Jiang, Arif Harmanci

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Growing regulatory requirements set barriers around genetic data sharing and collaborations. Moreover, existing privacy-aware paradigms are challenging to deploy in collaborative settings. We present COLLAGENE, a tool base for building secure collaborative genomic data analysis methods. COLLAGENE protects data using shared-key homomorphic encryption and combines encryption with multiparty strategies for efficient privacy-aware collaborative method development. COLLAGENE provides ready-to-run tools for encryption/decryption, matrix processing, and network transfers, which can be immediately integrated into existing pipelines. We demonstrate the usage of COLLAGENE by building a practical federated GWAS protocol for binary phenotypes and a secure meta-analysis protocol. COLLAGENE is available at https://zenodo.org/record/8125935 …

Beyond The Exome: What’S Next In Diagnostic Testing For Mendelian Conditions, Monica H Wojcik, Chloe M Reuter, Shruti Marwaha, Medhat Mahmoud, Michael H Duyzend, Hayk Barseghyan, Bo Yuan, Philip M Boone, Emily E Groopman, Emmanuèle C Délot, Deepti Jain, Alba Sanchis-Juan, Genomics Research To Elucidate The Genetics Of Rare Diseases (Gregor) Consortium, Lea M Starita, Michael Talkowski, Stephen B Montgomery, Michael J Bamshad, Jessica X Chong, Matthew T Wheeler, Seth I Berger, Anne O'Donnell-Luria, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Danny E Miller

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Despite advances in clinical genetic testing, including the introduction of exome sequencing (ES), more than 50% of individuals with a suspected Mendelian condition lack a precise molecular diagnosis. Clinical evaluation is increasingly undertaken by specialists outside of clinical genetics, often occurring in a tiered fashion and typically ending after ES. The current diagnostic rate reflects multiple factors, including technical limitations, incomplete understanding of variant pathogenicity, missing genotype-phenotype associations, complex gene-environment interactions, and reporting differences between clinical labs. Maintaining a clear understanding of the rapidly evolving landscape of diagnostic tests beyond ES, and their limitations, presents a challenge for non-genetics professionals. …

Genome-Wide Crispr-Cas9 Screen Analyzed By Slider Identifies Network Of Repressor Complexes That Regulate Trim24, Lalit R Patel, Sabrina A Stratton, Megan Mclaughlin, Patrick Krause, Kendra Allton, Andrés López Rivas, Daniela Barbosa, Traver Hart, Michelle C Barton

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

TRIM24 is an oncogenic chromatin reader that is frequently overexpressed in human tumors and associated with poor prognosis. However, TRIM24 is rarely mutated, duplicated, or rearranged in cancer. This raises questions about how TRIM24 is regulated and what changes in its regulation are responsible for its overexpression. Here, we perform a genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 screen by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) that nominated 220 negative regulators and elucidated a regulatory network that includes the KAP1 corepressor, CNOT deadenylase, and GID/CTLH E3 ligase. Knocking out required components of these three complexes caused TRIM24 overexpression, confirming their negative regulation of TRIM24. Our findings …

Minimal Positional Substring Cover Is A Haplotype Threading Alternative To Li And Stephens Model, Ahsan Sanaullah, Degui Zhi, Shaojie Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The Li and Stephens (LS) hidden Markov model (HMM) models the process of reconstructing a haplotype as a mosaic copy of haplotypes in a reference panel. For small panels, the probabilistic parameterization of LS enables modeling the uncertainties of such mosaics. However, LS becomes inefficient when sample size is large, because of its linear time complexity. Recently the PBWT, an efficient data structure capturing the local haplotype matching among haplotypes, was proposed to offer a fast method for giving some optimal solution (Viterbi) to the LS HMM. Previously, we introduced the minimal positional substring cover (MPSC) problem as an alternative …

Genotype-Degree Of Hemolysis Correlation In Hereditary Spherocytosis, Yimeng Shi, Yuan Li, Xiawan Yang, Xiaoxia Li, Guangxin Peng, Xin Zhao, Xu Liu, Yufei Zhao, Jing Hu, Xiangrong Hu, Baohang Zhang, Kang Zhou, Yang Yang, Youzhen Xiong, Jianping Li, Huihui Fan, Wenrui Yang, Lei Ye, Liping Jing, Li Zhang, Fengkui Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Hereditary spherocytosis (HS) is a common inherited hemolytic anemia, caused by mutations in five genes that encode erythrocyte membrane skeleton proteins. The red blood cell (RBC) lifespan could directly reflect the degree of hemolysis. In the present cohort of 23 patients with HS, we performed next-generation sequencing (NGS) and Levitt's carbon monoxide (CO) breath test to investigate the potential genotype-degree of hemolysis correlation.

RESULTS: In the present cohort, we identified 8 ANK1,9 SPTB,5 SLC4A1 and 1 SPTA1 mutations in 23 patients with HS, and the median RBC lifespan was 14(8-48) days. The median RBC lifespan of patients with ANK1, …

Comprehensive Ecg Reference Intervals In C57bl/6n Substrains Provide A Generalizable Guide For Cardiac Electrophysiology Studies In Mice, Manuela A Oestereicher, Janine M Wotton, Shinya Ayabe, Ghina Bou About, Tsz Kwan Cheng, Jae-Hoon Choi, Dave Clary, Emily M Dew, Lahcen Elfertak, Alain Guimond, Hamed Haseli Mashhadi, Jason D Heaney, Lois Kelsey, Piia Keskivali-Bond, Federico Lopez Gomez, Susan Marschall, Michael Mcfarland, Hamid Meziane, Violeta Munoz Fuentes, Ki-Hoan Nam, Zuzana Nichtová, Dale Pimm, Lynette Bower, Jan Prochazka, Jan Rozman, Luis Santos, Michelle Stewart, Nobuhiko Tanaka, Christopher S Ward, Amelia M E Willett, Robert Wilson, Robert E Braun, Mary E Dickinson, Ann M Flenniken, Yann Herault, K C Kent Lloyd, Ann-Marie Mallon, Colin Mckerlie, Stephen A Murray, Lauryl M J Nutter, Radislav Sedlacek, Je Kyung Seong, Tania Sorg, Masaru Tamura, Sara Wells, Elida Schneltzer, Helmut Fuchs, Valerie Gailus-Durner, Martin Hrabe De Angelis, Jacqueline K White, Nadine Spielmann

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Reference ranges provide a powerful tool for diagnostic decision-making in clinical medicine and are enormously valuable for understanding normality in pre-clinical scientific research that uses in vivo models. As yet, there are no published reference ranges for electrocardiography (ECG) in the laboratory mouse. The first mouse-specific reference ranges for the assessment of electrical conduction are reported herein generated from an ECG dataset of unprecedented scale. International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium data from over 26,000 conscious or anesthetized C57BL/6N wildtype control mice were stratified by sex and age to develop robust ECG reference ranges. Interesting findings include that heart rate and key …

Delineating The Cellular Mechanisms Of Endoplasmic Reticulum-Retained Endoglin Mutants Causing Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia Type 1, Nesrin Mohammed Gariballa

Dissertations

Endoglin, also known as cluster of differentiation 105 (CD105), is an auxiliary receptor in the TGFβ signaling pathway. It is predominantly expressed in endothelial cells as a component of the heterotetrameric receptor dimers comprising type I, type II receptors and the binding ligands. Mutations in ENG, the gene encoding endoglin, have been associated with Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia type 1 (HHT1), a rare autosomal dominant inherited disorder affecting about 1 in 5000-8000 individuals, which is generally characterized by vascular malformations. Secretory and many endomembrane proteins synthesized in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) are subjected to a highly stringent protein folding and assembly …

Dna Supercoiling-Induced Shapes Alter Minicircle Hydrodynamic Properties, Radost Waszkiewicz, Maduni Ranasinghe, Jonathan M Fogg, Daniel J Catanese, Maria L Ekiel-Jeżewska, Maciej Lisicki, Borries Demeler, Lynn Zechiedrich, Piotr Szymczak

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

DNA in cells is organized in negatively supercoiled loops. The resulting torsional and bending strain allows DNA to adopt a surprisingly wide variety of 3-D shapes. This interplay between negative supercoiling, looping, and shape influences how DNA is stored, replicated, transcribed, repaired, and likely every other aspect of DNA activity. To understand the consequences of negative supercoiling and curvature on the hydrodynamic properties of DNA, we submitted 336 bp and 672 bp DNA minicircles to analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC). We found that the diffusion coefficient, sedimentation coefficient, and the DNA hydrodynamic radius strongly depended on circularity, loop length, and degree of …

Physio-Psycho-Social Interaction Mechanism In Dyadic Health Of Young And Middle-Aged Stroke Survivors And Their Spousal Caregivers: A Longitudinal Observational Study Protocol, Dandan Xiang, Zhen-Xiang Zhang, Song Ge, Wen Na Wang, Bei-Lei Lin, Su-Yan Chen, Er-Feng Guo, Peng-Bo Zhang, Zhi-Wei Liu, Hui Li, Yong-Xia Mei

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: In recent years, stroke has become more common among young people. Stroke not only has a profound impact on patients' health but also incurs stress and health threats to their caregivers, especially spousal caregivers. Moreover, the health of stroke survivors and their caregivers is interdependent. To our knowledge, no study has explored dyadic health of young and middle-aged stroke survivors and their spousal caregivers from physiological, psychological and social perspectives. Therefore, this proposed study aims to explore the mechanism of how physiological, psychological and social factors affect dyadic health of young and middle-aged stroke survivors and their spousal caregivers. …

Rare Variant Enrichment Analysis Supports Greb1l As A Contributory Driver Gene In The Etiology Of Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome, Angad Jolly, Haowei Du, Christelle Borel, Na Chen, Sen Zhao, Christopher M Grochowski, Ruizhi Duan, Jawid M Fatih, Moez Dawood, Sejal Salvi, Shalini N Jhangiani, Donna M Muzny, André Koch, Konstantinos Rouskas, Stavros Glentis, Efthymios Deligeoroglou, Flora Bacopoulou, Carol A Wise, Jennifer E Dietrich, Ignatia B Van Den Veyver, Antigone S Dimas, Sara Brucker, V Reid Sutton, Richard A Gibbs, Stylianos E Antonarakis, Nan Wu, Zeynep H Coban-Akdemir, Lan Zhu, Jennifer E Posey, James R Lupski

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome is characterized by aplasia of the female reproductive tract; the syndrome can include renal anomalies, absence or dysgenesis, and skeletal anomalies. While functional models have elucidated several candidate genes, only WNT4 (MIM: 603490) variants have been definitively associated with a subtype of MRKH with hyperandrogenism (MIM: 158330). DNA from 148 clinically diagnosed MRKH probands across 144 unrelated families and available family members from North America, Europe, and South America were exome sequenced (ES) and by family-based genomics analyzed for rare likely deleterious variants. A replication cohort consisting of 442 Han Chinese individuals with MRKH was …

Srtsim: Spatial Pattern Preserving Simulations For Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics, Jiaqiang Zhu, Lulu Shang, Xiang Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Spatially resolved transcriptomics (SRT)-specific computational methods are often developed, tested, validated, and evaluated in silico using simulated data. Unfortunately, existing simulated SRT data are often poorly documented, hard to reproduce, or unrealistic. Single-cell simulators are not directly applicable for SRT simulation as they cannot incorporate spatial information. We present SRTsim, an SRT-specific simulator for scalable, reproducible, and realistic SRT simulations. SRTsim not only maintains various expression characteristics of SRT data but also preserves spatial patterns. We illustrate the benefits of SRTsim in benchmarking methods for spatial clustering, spatial expression pattern detection, and cell-cell communication identification.

A Biallelic Frameshift Indel In Ppp1r35 As A Cause Of Primary Microcephaly, Moez Dawood, Gulsen Akay, Tadahiro Mitani, Dana Marafi, Jawid M Fatih, Alper Gezdirici, Hossein Najmabadi, Kimia Kahrizi, Jaya Punetha, Christopher M Grochowski, Haowei Du, Angad Jolly, He Li, Zeynep Coban-Akdemir, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Jill V Hunter, Shalini N Jhangiani, Donna Muzny, Davut Pehlivan, Jennifer E Posey, Claudia M B Carvalho, Richard A Gibbs, James R Lupski

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Protein phosphatase 1 regulatory subunit 35 (PPP1R35) encodes a centrosomal protein required for recruiting microtubule-binding elongation machinery. Several proteins in this centriole biogenesis pathway correspond to established primary microcephaly (MCPH) genes, and multiple model organism studies hypothesize PPP1R35 as a candidate MCPH gene. Here, using exome sequencing (ES) and family-based rare variant analyses, we report a homozygous, frameshifting indel deleting the canonical stop codon in the last exon of PPP1R35 [Chr7: c.753_*3delGGAAGCGTAGACCinsCG (p.Trp251Cysfs*22)]; the variant allele maps in a 3.7 Mb block of absence of heterozygosity (AOH) in a proband with severe MCPH (-4.3 SD at birth, -6.1 SD by …

Braf V600e-Mutant Cancers Treated With Vemurafenib Alone Or In Combination With Everolimus, Sorafenib, Or Crizotinib Or With Paclitaxel And Carboplatin (Vem-Plus) Study, Blessie Elizabeth Nelson, Jason Roszik, Filip Janku, David S Hong, Shumei Kato, Aung Naing, Sarina Piha-Paul, Siqing Fu, Apostolia Tsimberidou, Maria Cabanillas, Naifa Lamki Busaidy, Milind Javle, Lauren Averett Byers, John V Heymach, Funda Meric-Bernstam, Vivek Subbiah

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Combined BRAF + MEK inhibition is FDA approved for BRAF V600E-mutant solid tumors except for colorectal cancer. However, beyond MAPK mediated resistance several other mechanisms of resistance such as activation of CRAF, ARAF, MET, P13K/AKT/mTOR pathway exist among other complex pathways. In the VEM-PLUS study, we performed a pooled analysis of four phase one studies evaluating the safety and efficacy of vemurafenib monotherapy and vemurafenib combined with targeted therapies (sorafenib, crizotinib, or everolimus) or carboplatin plus paclitaxel in advanced solid tumors harboring BRAF V600 mutations. When vemurafenib monotherapy was compared with the combination regimens, no significant differences in OS or …

Deepbend: An Interpretable Model Of Dna Bendability, Samin Rahman Khan, Sadman Sakib, M Sohel Rahman, Md Abul Hassan Samee

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The bendability of genomic DNA impacts chromatin packaging and protein-DNA binding. However, we do not have a comprehensive understanding of the motifs influencing DNA bendability. Recent high-throughput technologies such as Loop-Seq offer an opportunity to address this gap but the lack of accurate and interpretable machine learning models still remains. Here we introduce DeepBend, a convolutional neural network model with convolutions designed to directly capture the motifs underlying DNA bendability and their periodic occurrences or relative arrangements that modulate bendability. DeepBend consistently performs on par with alternative models while giving an extra edge through mechanistic interpretations. Besides confirming the known …

Exome Array Analysis Of 9721 Ischemic Stroke Cases From The Sign Consortium, Huichun Xu, Kevin Nguyen, Brady J Gaynor, Hua Ling, Wei Zhao, Patrick F Mcardle, Timothy D O'Connor, O Colin Stine, Kathleen A Ryan, Megan Lynch, Jennifer A Smith, Jessica D Faul, Yao Hu, Jeffrey W Haessler, Myriam Fornage, Charles Kooperberg, On Behalf Of The Trans-Omics For Precision Medicine Topmed Stroke Working Group, James A Perry, Charles C Hong, John W Cole, Elizabeth Pugh, Kimberly Doheny, Sharon L R Kardia, David R Weir, Steven J Kittner, Braxton D Mitchell, Sign Consortium

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Recent genome wide association studies have identified 89 common genetic variants robustly associated with ischemic stroke and primarily located in non-coding regions. To evaluate the contribution of coding variants, which are mostly rare, we performed an exome array analysis on 106,101 SNPs for 9721 ischemic stroke cases from the SiGN Consortium, and 12,345 subjects with no history of stroke from the Health Retirement Study and SiGN consortium. We identified 15 coding variants significantly associated with all ischemic stroke at array-wide threshold (i.e., p < 4.7 × 10-7), including two common SNPs in ABO that have previously been associated with stroke. Twelve of the remaining 13 variants were extremely rare …

Deciphering The Mechanism And Function Of Hsp100 Unfoldases From Protein Structure, Grace Lee, Rebecca S Kim, Sang Bum Lee, Sukyeong Lee, Francis T F Tsai

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Hsp100 chaperones, also known as Clp proteins, constitute a family of ring-forming ATPases that differ in 3D structure and cellular function from other stress-inducible molecular chaperones. While the vast majority of ATP-dependent molecular chaperones promote the folding of either the nascent chain or a newly imported polypeptide to reach its native conformation, Hsp100 chaperones harness metabolic energy to perform the reverse and facilitate the unfolding of a misfolded polypeptide or protein aggregate. It is now known that inside cells and organelles, different Hsp100 members are involved in rescuing stress-damaged proteins from a previously aggregated state or in recycling polypeptides marked …

Lpa Disruption With Aav-Crispr Potently Lowers Plasma Apo(A) In Transgenic Mouse Model: A Proof-Of-Concept Study, Alexandria M Doerfler, So Hyun Park, Julia M Assini, Amer Youssef, Lavanya Saxena, Adam B Yaseen, Marco De Giorgi, Marcel Chuecos, Ayrea E Hurley, Ang Li, Santica M Marcovina, Gang Bao, Michael B Boffa, Marlys L Koschinsky, William R Lagor

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Lipoprotein(a) (Lp(a)) represents a unique subclass of circulating lipoprotein particles and consists of an apolipoprotein(a) (apo(a)) molecule covalently bound to apolipoprotein B-100. The metabolism of Lp(a) particles is distinct from that of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and currently approved lipid-lowering drugs do not provide substantial reductions in Lp(a), a causal risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Somatic genome editing has the potential to be a one-time therapy for individuals with extremely high Lp(a). We generated an LPA transgenic mouse model expressing apo(a) of physiologically relevant size. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 was used to disrupt the LPA transgene in …

Privacy-Aware Estimation Of Relatedness In Admixed Populations, Su Wang, Miran Kim, Wentao Li, Xiaoqian Jiang, Han Chen, Arif Harmanci

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Estimation of genetic relatedness, or kinship, is used occasionally for recreational purposes and in forensic applications. While numerous methods were developed to estimate kinship, they suffer from high computational requirements and often make an untenable assumption of homogeneous population ancestry of the samples. Moreover, genetic privacy is generally overlooked in the usage of kinship estimation methods. There can be ethical concerns about finding unknown familial relationships in third-party databases. Similar ethical concerns may arise while estimating and reporting sensitive population-level statistics such as inbreeding coefficients for the concerns around marginalization and stigmatization.

RESULTS: Here, we present SIGFRIED, which makes …

The Evolving Privacy And Security Concerns For Genomic Data Analysis And Sharing As Observed From The Idash Competition, Tsung-Ting Kuo, Xiaoqian Jiang, Haixu Tang, Xiaofeng Wang, Arif Harmanci, Miran Kim, Kai Post, Diyue Bu, Tyler Bath, Jihoon Kim, Weijie Liu, Hongbo Chen, Lucila Ohno-Machado

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Concerns regarding inappropriate leakage of sensitive personal information as well as unauthorized data use are increasing with the growth of genomic data repositories. Therefore, privacy and security of genomic data have become increasingly important and need to be studied. With many proposed protection techniques, their applicability in support of biomedical research should be well understood. For this purpose, we have organized a community effort in the past 8 years through the integrating data for analysis, anonymization and sharing consortium to address this practical challenge. In this article, we summarize our experience from these competitions, report lessons learned from the events …

Scgwas: Landscape Of Trait-Cell Type Associations By Integrating Single-Cell Transcriptomics-Wide And Genome-Wide Association Studies, Peilin Jia, Ruifeng Hu, Fangfang Yan, Yulin Dai, Zhongming Zhao

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: The rapid accumulation of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data presents unique opportunities to decode the genetically mediated cell-type specificity in complex diseases. Here, we develop a new method, scGWAS, which effectively leverages scRNA-seq data to achieve two goals: (1) to infer the cell types in which the disease-associated genes manifest and (2) to construct cellular modules which imply disease-specific activation of different processes.

RESULTS: scGWAS only utilizes the average gene expression for each cell type followed by virtual search processes to construct the null distributions of module scores, making it scalable to large scRNA-seq datasets. We demonstrated scGWAS in …

Svat: Secure Outsourcing Of Variant Annotation And Genotype Aggregation, Miran Kim, Su Wang, Xiaoqian Jiang, Arif Harmanci

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Sequencing of thousands of samples provides genetic variants with allele frequencies spanning a very large spectrum and gives invaluable insight into genetic determinants of diseases. Protecting the genetic privacy of participants is challenging as only a few rare variants can easily re-identify an individual among millions. In certain cases, there are policy barriers against sharing genetic data from indigenous populations and stigmatizing conditions.

RESULTS: We present SVAT, a method for secure outsourcing of variant annotation and aggregation, which are two basic steps in variant interpretation and detection of causal variants. SVAT uses homomorphic encryption to encrypt the data at …

Evaluation Of Vicinity-Based Hidden Markov Models For Genotype Imputation, Su Wang, Miran Kim, Xiaoqian Jiang, Arif Ozgun Harmanci

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: The decreasing cost of DNA sequencing has led to a great increase in our knowledge about genetic variation. While population-scale projects bring important insight into genotype-phenotype relationships, the cost of performing whole-genome sequencing on large samples is still prohibitive. In-silico genotype imputation coupled with genotyping-by-arrays is a cost-effective and accurate alternative for genotyping of common and uncommon variants. Imputation methods compare the genotypes of the typed variants with the large population-specific reference panels and estimate the genotypes of untyped variants by making use of the linkage disequilibrium patterns. Most accurate imputation methods are based on the Li-Stephens hidden Markov …

A Multi-Layer Functional Genomic Analysis To Understand Noncoding Genetic Variation In Lipids, Shweta Ramdas, Jonathan Judd, Sarah E Graham, Stavroula Kanoni, Yuxuan Wang, Ida Surakka, Brandon Wenz, Shoa L Clarke, Alessandra Chesi, Andrew Wells, Konain Fatima Bhatti, Sailaja Vedantam, Thomas W Winkler, Adam E Locke, Eirini Marouli, Greg J M Zajac, Kuan-Han H Wu, Ioanna Ntalla, Qin Hui, Derek Klarin, Austin T Hilliard, Zeyuan Wang, Chao Xue, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Anna Helgadottir, Daniel F Gudbjartsson, Hilma Holm, Isleifur Olafsson, Mi Yeong Hwang, Sohee Han, Masato Akiyama, Saori Sakaue, Chikashi Terao, Masahiro Kanai, Wei Zhou, Ben M Brumpton, Humaira Rasheed, Aki S Havulinna, Yogasudha Veturi, Jennifer Allen Pacheco, Elisabeth A Rosenthal, Todd Lingren, Qiping Feng, Iftikhar J Kullo, Akira Narita, Jun Takayama, Hilary C Martin, Karen A Hunt, Bhavi Trivedi, Jeffrey Haessler, Franco Giulianini, Yuki Bradford, Jason E Miller, Archie Campbell, Kuang Lin, Iona Y Millwood, Asif Rasheed, George Hindy, Jessica D Faul, Wei Zhao, David R Weir, Constance Turman, Hongyan Huang, Mariaelisa Graff, Ananyo Choudhury, Dhriti Sengupta, Anubha Mahajan, Michael R Brown, Weihua Zhang, Ketian Yu, Ellen M Schmidt, Anita Pandit, Stefan Gustafsson, Xianyong Yin, Jian'an Luan, Jing-Hua Zhao, Fumihiko Matsuda, Hye-Mi Jang, Kyungheon Yoon, Carolina Medina-Gomez, Achilleas Pitsillides, Jouke Jan Hottenga, Andrew R Wood, Yingji Ji, Zishan Gao, Simon Haworth, Ruth E Mitchell, Jin Fang Chai, Mette Aadahl, Anne A Bjerregaard, Jie Yao, Ani Manichaikul, Wen-Jane Lee, Chao Agnes Hsiung, Helen R Warren, Julia Ramirez, Jette Bork-Jensen, Line L Kårhus, Anuj Goel, Maria Sabater-Lleal, Raymond Noordam, Pala Mauro, Floris Matteo, Aaron F Mcdaid, Pedro Marques-Vidal, Matthias Wielscher, Stella Trompet, Naveed Sattar, Line T Møllehave, Matthias Munz, Lingyao Zeng, Jianfeng Huang, Bin Yang, Alaitz Poveda, Azra Kurbasic, Sebastian Schönherr, Lukas Forer, Markus Scholz, Tessel E Galesloot, Jonathan P Bradfield, Sanni E Ruotsalainen, E Warwick Daw, Joseph M Zmuda, Jonathan S Mitchell, Christian Fuchsberger, Henry Christensen, Jennifer A Brody, Phuong Le, Mary F Feitosa, Mary K Wojczynski, Daiane Hemerich, Michael Preuss, Massimo Mangino, Paraskevi Christofidou, Niek Verweij, Jan W Benjamins, Jorgen Engmann, Tsao L Noah, Anurag Verma, Roderick C Slieker, Ken Sin Lo, Nuno R Zilhao, Marcus E Kleber, Graciela E Delgado, Shaofeng Huo, Daisuke D Ikeda, Hiroyuki Iha, Jian Yang, Jun Liu, Ayşe Demirkan, Hampton L Leonard, Jonathan Marten, Carina Emmel, Börge Schmidt, Laura J Smyth, Marisa Cañadas-Garre, Chaolong Wang, Masahiro Nakatochi, Andrew Wong, Nina Hutri-Kähönen, Xueling Sim, Rui Xia, Alicia Huerta-Chagoya, Juan Carlos Fernandez-Lopez, Valeriya Lyssenko, Suraj S Nongmaithem, Alagu Sankareswaran, Marguerite R Irvin, Christopher Oldmeadow, Han-Na Kim, Seungho Ryu, Paul R H J Timmers, Liubov Arbeeva, Rajkumar Dorajoo, Leslie A Lange, Gauri Prasad, Laura Lorés-Motta, Marc Pauper, Jirong Long, Xiaohui Li, Elizabeth Theusch, Fumihiko Takeuchi, Cassandra N Spracklen, Anu Loukola, Sailalitha Bollepalli, Sophie C Warner, Ya Xing Wang, Wen B Wei, Teresa Nutile, Daniela Ruggiero, Yun Ju Sung, Shufeng Chen, Fangchao Liu, Jingyun Yang, Katherine A Kentistou, Bernhard Banas, Anna Morgan, Karina Meidtner, Lawrence F Bielak, Jennifer A Smith, Prashantha Hebbar, Aliki-Eleni Farmaki, Edith Hofer, Maoxuan Lin, Maria Pina Concas, Simona Vaccargiu, Peter J Van Der Most, Niina Pitkänen, Brian E Cade, Sander W Van Der Laan, Kumaraswamy Naidu Chitrala, Stefan Weiss, Amy R Bentley, Ayo P Doumatey, Adebowale A Adeyemo, Jong Young Lee, Eva R B Petersen, Aneta A Nielsen, Hyeok Sun Choi, Maria Nethander, Sandra Freitag-Wolf, Lorraine Southam, Nigel W Rayner, Carol A Wang, Shih-Yi Lin, Jun-Sing Wang, Christian Couture, Leo-Pekka Lyytikäinen, Kjell Nikus, Gabriel Cuellar-Partida, Henrik Vestergaard, Bertha Hidalgo, Olga Giannakopoulou, Qiuyin Cai, Morgan O Obura, Jessica Van Setten, Karen Y He, Hua Tang, Natalie Terzikhan, Jae Hun Shin, Rebecca D Jackson, Alexander P Reiner, Lisa Warsinger Martin, Zhengming Chen, Liming Li, Takahisa Kawaguchi, Joachim Thiery, Joshua C Bis, Lenore J Launer, Huaixing Li, Mike A Nalls, Olli T Raitakari, Sahoko Ichihara, Sarah H Wild, Christopher P Nelson, Harry Campbell, Susanne Jäger, Toru Nabika, Fahd Al-Mulla, Harri Niinikoski, Peter S Braund, Ivana Kolcic, Peter Kovacs, Tota Giardoglou, Tomohiro Katsuya, Dominique De Kleijn, Gert J De Borst, Eung Kweon Kim, Hieab H H Adams, M Arfan Ikram, Xiaofeng Zhu, Folkert W Asselbergs, Adriaan O Kraaijeveld, Joline W J Beulens, Xiao-Ou Shu, Loukianos S Rallidis, Oluf Pedersen, Torben Hansen, Paul Mitchell, Alex W Hewitt, Mika Kähönen, Louis Pérusse, Claude Bouchard, Anke Tönjes, Yii-Der Ida Chen, Craig E Pennell, Trevor A Mori, Wolfgang Lieb, Andre Franke, Claes Ohlsson, Dan Mellström, Yoon Shin Cho, Hyejin Lee, Jian-Min Yuan, Woon-Puay Koh, Sang Youl Rhee, Jeong-Taek Woo, Iris M Heid, Klaus J Stark, Martina E Zimmermann, Henry Völzke, Georg Homuth, Michele K Evans, Alan B Zonderman, Ozren Polasek, Gerard Pasterkamp, Imo E Hoefer, Susan Redline, Katja Pahkala, Albertine J Oldehinkel, Harold Snieder, Ginevra Biino, Reinhold Schmidt, Helena Schmidt, Stefania Bandinelli, George Dedoussis, Thangavel Alphonse Thanaraj, Patricia A Peyser, Norihiro Kato, Matthias B Schulze, Giorgia Girotto, Carsten A Böger, Bettina Jung, Peter K Joshi, David A Bennett, Philip L De Jager, Xiangfeng Lu, Vasiliki Mamakou, Morris Brown, Mark J Caulfield, Patricia B Munroe, Xiuqing Guo, Marina Ciullo, Jost B Jonas, Nilesh J Samani, Jaakko Kaprio, Päivi Pajukanta, Teresa Tusié-Luna, Carlos A Aguilar-Salinas, Linda S Adair, Sonny Augustin Bechayda, H Janaka De Silva, Ananda R Wickremasinghe, Ronald M Krauss, Jer-Yuarn Wu, Wei Zheng, Anneke I Den Hollander, Dwaipayan Bharadwaj, Adolfo Correa, James G Wilson, Lars Lind, Chew-Kiat Heng, Amanda E Nelson, Yvonne M Golightly, James F Wilson, Brenda Penninx, Hyung-Lae Kim, John Attia, Rodney J Scott, D C Rao, Donna K Arnett, Mark Walker, Laura J Scott, Heikki A Koistinen, Giriraj R Chandak, Josep M Mercader, Clicerio Gonzalez Villalpando, Lorena Orozco, Myriam Fornage, E Shyong Tai, Rob M Van Dam, Terho Lehtimäki, Nish Chaturvedi, Mitsuhiro Yokota, Jianjun Liu, Dermot F Reilly, Amy Jayne Mcknight, Frank Kee, Karl-Heinz Jöckel, Mark I Mccarthy, Colin N A Palmer, Veronique Vitart, Caroline Hayward, Eleanor Simonsick, Cornelia M Van Duijn, Zi-Bing Jin, Fan Lu, Haretsugu Hishigaki, Xu Lin, Winfried März, Vilmundur Gudnason, Jean-Claude Tardif, Guillaume Lettre, Leen M T Hart, Petra J M Elders, Daniel J Rader, Scott M Damrauer, Meena Kumari, Mika Kivimaki, Pim Van Der Harst, Tim D Spector, Ruth J F Loos, Michael A Province, Esteban J Parra, Miguel Cruz, Bruce M Psaty, Ivan Brandslund, Peter P Pramstaller, Charles N Rotimi, Kaare Christensen, Samuli Ripatti, Elisabeth Widén, Hakon Hakonarson, Struan F A Grant, Lambertus Kiemeney, Jacqueline De Graaf, Markus Loeffler, Florian Kronenberg, Dongfeng Gu, Jeanette Erdmann, Heribert Schunkert, Paul W Franks, Allan Linneberg, J Wouter Jukema, Amit V Khera, Minna Männikkö, Marjo-Riitta Jarvelin, Zoltan Kutalik, Cucca Francesco, Dennis O Mook-Kanamori, Ko Willems Van Dijk, Hugh Watkins, David P Strachan, Niels Grarup, Peter Sever, Neil Poulter, Wayne Huey-Herng Sheu, Jerome I Rotter, Thomas M Dantoft, Fredrik Karpe, Matt J Neville, Nicholas J Timpson, Ching-Yu Cheng, Tien-Yin Wong, Chiea Chuen Khor, Hengtong Li, Charumathi Sabanayagam, Annette Peters, Christian Gieger, Andrew T Hattersley, Nancy L Pedersen, Patrik K E Magnusson, Dorret I Boomsma, Eco J C De Geus, L Adrienne Cupples, Joyce B J Van Meurs, Arfan Ikram, Mohsen Ghanbari, Penny Gordon-Larsen, Wei Huang, Young Jin Kim, Yasuharu Tabara, Nicholas J Wareham, Claudia Langenberg, Eleftheria Zeggini, Jaakko Tuomilehto, Johanna Kuusisto, Markku Laakso, Erik Ingelsson, Goncalo Abecasis, John C Chambers, Jaspal S Kooner, Paul S De Vries, Alanna C Morrison, Scott Hazelhurst, Michèle Ramsay, Kari E North, Martha Daviglus, Peter Kraft, Nicholas G Martin, John B Whitfield, Shahid Abbas, Danish Saleheen, Robin G Walters, Michael V Holmes, Corri Black, Blair H Smith, Aris Baras, Anne E Justice, Julie E Buring, Paul M Ridker, Daniel I Chasman, Charles Kooperberg, Gen Tamiya, Masayuki Yamamoto, David A Van Heel, Richard C Trembath, Wei-Qi Wei, Gail P Jarvik, Bahram Namjou, M Geoffrey Hayes, Marylyn D Ritchie, Pekka Jousilahti, Veikko Salomaa, Kristian Hveem, Bjørn Olav Åsvold, Michiaki Kubo, Yoichiro Kamatani, Yukinori Okada, Yoshinori Murakami, Bong-Jo Kim, Unnur Thorsteinsdottir, Kari Stefansson, Jifeng Zhang, Y Eugene Chen, Yuk-Lam Ho, Julie A Lynch, Philip S Tsao, Kyong-Mi Chang, Kelly Cho, Christopher J O'Donnell, John M Gaziano, Peter Wilson, Karen L Mohlke, Timothy M Frayling, Joel N Hirschhorn, Sekar Kathiresan, Michael Boehnke, Million Veterans Program, Global Lipids Genetics Consortium, Struan Grant, Pradeep Natarajan, Yan V Sun, Andrew P Morris, Panos Deloukas, Gina Peloso, Themistocles L Assimes, Cristen J Willer, Xiang Zhu, Christopher D Brown

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

A major challenge of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) is to translate phenotypic associations into biological insights. Here, we integrate a large GWAS on blood lipids involving 1.6 million individuals from five ancestries with a wide array of functional genomic datasets to discover regulatory mechanisms underlying lipid associations. We first prioritize lipid-associated genes with expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) colocalizations and then add chromatin interaction data to narrow the search for functional genes. Polygenic enrichment analysis across 697 annotations from a host of tissues and cell types confirms the central role of the liver in lipid levels and highlights the selective …

Genetics And Genomics Education Among Physician Assistants, Wesley Patterson

All Dissertations

This dissertation comprises five chapters to describe genetics and genomics education among physician assistant/associate (PA) students and practicing PAs. Chapter I introduces the gap in supply and demand of genetic services, the need for non-genetics healthcare providers to fill the gap, and the PA profession as a solution.

Chapter II is a rapid literature review that summarizes the available literature regarding genetics and genomics education for PAs. A paucity of literature exists to describe the current state of PA genetics-genomics education. The few studies retrieved describe content being taught in PA programs, the number of genetics-genomics contact hours PA students …

Accelerated Identification Of Disease-Causing Variants With Ultra-Rapid Nanopore Genome Sequencing, Sneha D Goenka, John E Gorzynski, Kishwar Shafin, Dianna G Fisk, Trevor Pesout, Tanner D Jensen, Jean Monlong, Pi-Chuan Chang, Gunjan Baid, Jonathan A Bernstein, Jeffrey W Christle, Karen P Dalton, Daniel R Garalde, Megan E Grove, Joseph Guillory, Alexey Kolesnikov, Maria Nattestad, Maura R Z Ruzhnikov, Mehrzad Samadi, Ankit Sethia, Elizabeth Spiteri, Christopher J Wright, Katherine Xiong, Tong Zhu, Miten Jain, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Andrew Carroll, Benedict Paten, Euan A Ashley

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) can identify variants that cause genetic disease, but the time required for sequencing and analysis has been a barrier to its use in acutely ill patients. In the present study, we develop an approach for ultra-rapid nanopore WGS that combines an optimized sample preparation protocol, distributing sequencing over 48 flow cells, near real-time base calling and alignment, accelerated variant calling and fast variant filtration for efficient manual review. Application to two example clinical cases identified a candidate variant inprioritization, and accelerates diagnostic clinical genome sequencing twofold compared with previous approaches.

Transcriptome-Wide Identification Of Rna-Binding Protein Binding Sites Using Seclip-Seq, Steven M Blue, Brian A Yee, Gabriel A Pratt, Jasmine R Mueller, Samuel S Park, Alexander A Shishkin, Anne C Starner, Eric L Van Nostrand, Gene W Yeo

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Discovery of interaction sites between RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and their RNA targets plays a critical role in enabling our understanding of how these RBPs control RNA processing and regulation. Cross-linking and immunoprecipitation (CLIP) provides a generalizable, transcriptome-wide method by which RBP/RNA complexes are purified and sequenced to identify sites of intermolecular contact. By simplifying technical challenges in prior CLIP methods and incorporating the generation of and quantitative comparison against size-matched input controls, the single-end enhanced CLIP (seCLIP) protocol allows for the profiling of these interactions with high resolution, efficiency and scalability. Here, we present a step-by-step guide to the seCLIP …

A Crispr Toolbox For Generating Intersectional Genetic Mouse Models For Functional, Molecular, And Anatomical Circuit Mapping, Savannah J Lusk, Andrew Mckinney, Patrick J Hunt, Paul G Fahey, Jay Patel, Andersen Chang, Jenny J Sun, Vena K Martinez, Ping Jun Zhu, Jeremy R Egbert, Genevera Allen, Xiaolong Jiang, Benjamin R Arenkiel, Andreas S Tolias, Mauro Costa-Mattioli, Russell S Ray

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: The functional understanding of genetic interaction networks and cellular mechanisms governing health and disease requires the dissection, and multifaceted study, of discrete cell subtypes in developing and adult animal models. Recombinase-driven expression of transgenic effector alleles represents a significant and powerful approach to delineate cell populations for functional, molecular, and anatomical studies. In addition to single recombinase systems, the expression of two recombinases in distinct, but partially overlapping, populations allows for more defined target expression. Although the application of this method is becoming increasingly popular, its experimental implementation has been broadly restricted to manipulations of a limited set of …