Biomedical Informatics Commons^™

A Harmonized Public Resource Of Deeply Sequenced Diverse Human Genomes, Zan Koenig, Mary T Yohannes, Lethukuthula L Nkambule, Xuefang Zhao, Julia K Goodrich, Heesu Ally Kim, Michael W Wilson, Grace Tiao, Stephanie P Hao, Nareh Sahakian, Katherine R Chao, Mark A Walker, Yunfei Lyu, Heidi L Rehm, Benjamin M Neale, Michael E Talkowski, Mark J Daly, Harrison Brand, Konrad J Karczewski, Elizabeth G Atkinson, Alicia R Martin

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Underrepresented populations are often excluded from genomic studies owing in part to a lack of resources supporting their analyses. The 1000 Genomes Project (1kGP) and Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), which have recently been sequenced to high coverage, are valuable genomic resources because of the global diversity they capture and their open data sharing policies. Here, we harmonized a high-quality set of 4094 whole genomes from 80 populations in the HGDP and 1kGP with data from the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) and identified over 153 million high-quality SNVs, indels, and SVs. We performed a detailed ancestry analysis of this cohort, …

Methphaser: Methylation-Based Long-Read Haplotype Phasing Of Human Genomes, Yilei Fu, Sergey Aganezov, Medhat Mahmoud, John Beaulaurier, Sissel Juul, Todd J Treangen, Fritz J Sedlazeck

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The assignment of variants across haplotypes, phasing, is crucial for predicting the consequences, interaction, and inheritance of mutations and is a key step in improving our understanding of phenotype and disease. However, phasing is limited by read length and stretches of homozygosity along the genome. To overcome this limitation, we designed MethPhaser, a method that utilizes methylation signals from Oxford Nanopore Technologies to extend Single Nucleotide Variation (SNV)-based phasing. We demonstrate that haplotype-specific methylations extensively exist in Human genomes and the advent of long-read technologies enabled direct report of methylation signals. For ONT R9 and R10 cell line data, we …

Study Of Prognostic Splicing Factors In Cancer Using Machine Learning Approaches, Mengyuan Yang, Jiajia Liu, Pora Kim, Xiaobo Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Splicing factors (SFs) are the major RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and key molecules that regulate the splicing of mRNA molecules through binding to mRNAs. The expression of splicing factors is frequently deregulated in different cancer types, causing the generation of oncogenic proteins involved in cancer hallmarks. In this study, we investigated the genes that encode RNA-binding proteins and identified potential splicing factors that contribute to the aberrant splicing applying a random forest classification model. The result suggested 56 splicing factors were related to the prognosis of 13 cancers, two SF complexes in liver hepatocellular carcinoma, and one SF complex in esophageal …

Esr1 And P53 Interactome Alteration Defines Mechanisms Of Tamoxifen Response In Luminal Breast Cancer, Chetan C Oturkar, Spencer R Rosario, Alan D Hutson, Adrianne Groman, Stephen B Edge, Carl D Morrison, Wendy M Swetzig, Jianmin Wang, Jun Hyoung Park, Benny Abraham Kaipparettu, Prashant K Singh, Shicha Kumar, Helen H Cappuccino, Manish Ranjan, Araba Adjei, Mohammad Ghasemi, Andrew K L Goey, Swati Kulkarni, Gokul M Das

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The canonical mechanism behind tamoxifen's therapeutic effect on estrogen receptor α/ESR1+ breast cancers is inhibition of ESR1-dependent estrogen signaling. Although ESR1+ tumors expressing wild-type p53 were reported to be more responsive to tamoxifen (Tam) therapy, p53 has not been factored into choice of this therapy and the mechanism underlying the role of p53 in Tam response remains unclear. In a window-of-opportunity trial on patients with newly diagnosed stage I-III ESR1+/HER2/wild-type p53 breast cancer who were randomized to arms with or without Tam prior to surgery, we reveal that the ESR1-p53 interaction in tumors was inhibited by Tam. This resulted in …

Comprehensive Single-Cell Atlas Of The Mouse Retina, Jin Li, Jongsu Choi, Xuesen Cheng, Justin Ma, Shahil Pema, Joshua R Sanes, Graeme Mardon, Benjamin J Frankfort, Nicholas M Tran, Yumei Li, Rui Chen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has advanced our understanding of cellular heterogeneity by characterizing cell types across tissues and species. While several mouse retinal scRNA-seq datasets exist, each dataset is either limited in cell numbers or focused on specific cell classes, thereby hindering comprehensive gene expression analysis across all retina types. To fill the gap, we generated the largest retinal scRNA-seq dataset to date, comprising approximately 190,000 single cells from C57BL/6J mouse retinas, enriched for rare population cells via antibody-based magnetic cell sorting. Integrating this dataset with public datasets, we constructed the Mouse Retina Cell Atlas (MRCA) for wild-type mice, encompassing …

Protocol For Optical, Aqueous-Based Clearing Of Murine Tissues Using Ez Clear, Taeyong Ahn, Gabrielle E Largoza, Julia Younis, Mary E Dickinson, Chih-Wei Hsu, Joshua D Wythe

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Tissue clearing is an essential prerequisite for 3D volumetric imaging of larger tissues or organs. Here, we present a detailed protocol for optical, aqueous-based clearing of adult murine tissues using EZ Clear. We describe steps to ensure successful perfusion and fixation of organs from the adult mouse and supply guidelines for optimal lipid removal, refractive index matching, and tissue clearing. Finally, we provide imaging parameters for visualizing both exogenous perfused fluorescent dyes and endogenous fluorescence reporters in the adult mouse. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Hsu et al.

A Single Cell Rna Sequence Atlas Of The Early Drosophila Larval Eye, Komal Kumar Bollepogu Raja, Kelvin Yeung, Yumei Li, Rui Chen, Graeme Mardon

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The Drosophila eye has been an important model to understand principles of differentiation, proliferation, apoptosis and tissue morphogenesis. However, a single cell RNA sequence resource that captures gene expression dynamics from the initiation of differentiation to the specification of different cell types in the larval eye disc is lacking. Here, we report transcriptomic data from 13,000 cells that cover six developmental stages of the larval eye. Our data show cell clusters that correspond to all major cell types present in the eye disc ranging from the initiation of the morphogenetic furrow to the differentiation of each photoreceptor cell type as …

Real World Predictors Of Response And 24-Month Survival In High-Grade Tp53-Mutated Myeloid Neoplasms, Amandeep Kaur, Alexandra E Rojek, Emily Symes, Mariam T Nawas, Anand A Patel, Jay L Patel, Payal Sojitra, Barina Aqil, Madina Sukhanova, Megan E Mcnerney, Leo P Wu, Aibek Akmatbekov, Jeremy Segal, Melissa Y Tjota, Sandeep Gurbuxani, Jason X Cheng, Su-Yeon Yeon, Harini V Ravisankar, Carrie Fitzpatrick, Angela Lager, Michael W Drazer, Caner Saygin, Pankhuri Wanjari, Panagiotis Katsonis, Olivier Lichtarge, Jane E Churpek, Sharmila B Ghosh, Ami B Patel, Madhu P Menon, Daniel A Arber, Peng Wang, Girish Venkataraman

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Current therapies for high-grade TP53-mutated myeloid neoplasms (≥10% blasts) do not offer a meaningful survival benefit except allogeneic stem cell transplantation in the minority who achieve a complete response to first line therapy (CR1). To identify reliable pre-therapy predictors of complete response to first-line therapy (CR1) and outcomes, we assembled a cohort of 242 individuals with TP53-mutated myeloid neoplasms and ≥10% blasts with well-annotated clinical, molecular and pathology data. Key outcomes examined were CR1 & 24-month survival (OS24). In this elderly cohort (median age 68.2 years) with 74.0% receiving frontline non-intensive regimens (hypomethylating agents +/- venetoclax), the overall cohort CR1 …

The Ifitm5 Mutation In Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type V Is Associated With An Erk/Sox9-Dependent Osteoprogenitor Differentiation Defect, Ronit Marom, I-Wen Song, Emily C Busse, Megan E Washington, Ava S Berrier, Vittoria C Rossi, Laura Ortinau, Youngjae Jeong, Ming-Ming Jiang, Brian C Dawson, Mary Adeyeye, Carolina Leynes, Caressa D Lietman, Bridget M Stroup, Dominyka Batkovskyte, Mahim Jain, Yuqing Chen, Racel Cela, Alexis Castellon, Alyssa A Tran, Isabel Lorenzo, D Nicole Meyers, Shixia Huang, Alicia Turner, Vinitha Shenava, Maegen Wallace, Eric Orwoll, Dongsu Park, Catherine G Ambrose, Sandesh Cs Nagamani, Jason D Heaney, Brendan H Lee

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) type V is the second most common form of OI, distinguished by hyperplastic callus formation and calcification of the interosseous membranes, in addition to the bone fragility. It is caused by a recurrent, dominant pathogenic variant (c.-14C>T) in interferon-induced transmembrane protein 5 (IFITM5). Here, we generated a conditional Rosa26-knockin mouse model to study the mechanistic consequences of the recurrent mutation. Expression of the mutant Ifitm5 in osteo-chondroprogenitor or chondrogenic cells resulted in low bone mass and growth retardation. Mutant limbs showed impaired endochondral ossification, cartilage overgrowth, and abnormal growth plate architecture. The cartilage phenotype correlates with …

Developmental Milestones And Daily Living Skills In Individuals With Angelman Syndrome, Anjali Sadhwani, Sonya Powers, Anne Wheeler, Hillary Miller, Sarah Nelson Potter, Sarika U Peters, Carlos A Bacino, Steven A Skinner, Logan K Wink, Craig A Erickson, Lynne M Bird, Wen-Hann Tan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Angelman syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with severe global developmental delay. However, the ages at which different developmental skills are achieved in these individuals remain unclear. We seek to determine the probability and the age of acquisition of specific developmental milestones and daily living skills in individuals with AS across the different molecular subtypes, viz. class I deletion, class II deletion, uniparental disomy, imprinting defect, and UBE3A variants.

METHODS: Caregivers participating in a longitudinal multicenter Angelman Syndrome Natural History Study completed a questionnaire regarding the age at which their children achieved specific developmental milestones and daily living …

Machine Learning In Time-Lapse Imaging To Differentiate Embryos From Young Vs Old Mice†, Liubin Yang, Carolina Leynes, Ashley Pawelka, Isabel Lorenzo, Andrew Chou, Brendan Lee, Jason D Heaney

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Time-lapse microscopy for embryos is a non-invasive technology used to characterize early embryo development. This study employs time-lapse microscopy and machine learning to elucidate changes in embryonic growth kinetics with maternal aging. We analyzed morphokinetic parameters of embryos from young and aged C57BL6/NJ mice via continuous imaging. Our findings show that aged embryos accelerated through cleavage stages (from 5-cells) to morula compared to younger counterparts, with no significant differences observed in later stages of blastulation. Unsupervised machine learning identified two distinct clusters comprising of embryos from aged or young donors. Moreover, in supervised learning, the extreme gradient boosting algorithm successfully …

Individuals With Jak1 Variants Are Affected By Syndromic Features Encompassing Autoimmunity, Atopy, Colitis, And Dermatitis, Michael E Horesh, Marta Martin-Fernandez, Conor Gruber, Sofija Buta, Tom Le Voyer, Eve Puzenat, Harry Lesmana, Yiming Wu, Ashley Richardson, David Stein, Stephanie Hodeib, Mariam Youssef, Jacob A Kurowski, Elizabeth Feuille, Luis A Pedroza, Ramsay L Fuleihan, Alexandria Haseley, Alain Hovnanian, Pierre Quartier, Jérémie Rosain, Georgina Davis, Daniel Mullan, O'Jay Stewart, Roosheel Patel, Angelica E Lee, Rebecca Rubinstein, Leyla Ewald, Nikhil Maheshwari, Virginia Rahming, Ivan K Chinn, James R Lupski, Jordan S Orange, Vanessa Sancho-Shimizu, Jean-Laurent Casanova, Noura S Abul-Husn, Yuval Itan, Joshua D Milner, Jacinta Bustamante, Dusan Bogunovic

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Inborn errors of immunity lead to autoimmunity, inflammation, allergy, infection, and/or malignancy. Disease-causing JAK1 gain-of-function (GoF) mutations are considered exceedingly rare and have been identified in only four families. Here, we use forward and reverse genetics to identify 59 individuals harboring one of four heterozygous JAK1 variants. In vitro and ex vivo analysis of these variants revealed hyperactive baseline and cytokine-induced STAT phosphorylation and interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) levels compared with wild-type JAK1. A systematic review of electronic health records from the BioME Biobank revealed increased likelihood of clinical presentation with autoimmunity, atopy, colitis, and/or dermatitis in JAK1 variant-positive individuals. Finally, …

Hyperkinetic Movement Disorder Caused By The Recurrent C892c>T Nacc1 Variant, Jonna Komulainen-Ebrahim, Salla M Kangas, Estrella López-Martín, Timothy Feyma, Fernando Scaglia, Beatriz Martínez-Delgado, Outi Kuismin, Maria Suo-Palosaari, Lucinda Carr, Reetta Hinttala, Manju A Kurian, Johanna Uusimaa

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Genetic syndromes of hyperkinetic movement disorders associated with epileptic encephalopathy and intellectual disability are becoming increasingly recognized. Recently, a de novo heterozygous NACC1 (nucleus accumbens-associated 1) missense variant was described in a patient cohort including one patient with a combined mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) deficiency.

OBJECTIVES: The objective is to characterize the movement disorder in affected patients with the recurrent c.892C>T NACC1 variant and study the NACC1 protein and mitochondrial function at the cellular level.

METHODS: The movement disorder was analyzed on four patients with the NACC1 c.892C>T (p.Arg298Trp) variant. Studies on NACC1 protein and mitochondrial function …

The Kat Module Of The Saga Complex Maintains The Oncogenic Gene Expression Program In Mycn- Amplified Neuroblastoma, Clare F Malone, Nathaniel W Mabe, Alexandra B Forman, Gabriela Alexe, Kathleen L Engel, Ying-Jiun C Chen, Melinda Soeung, Silvi Salhotra, Allen Basanthakumar, Bin Liu, Sharon Y R Dent, Kimberly Stegmaier

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Pediatric cancers are frequently driven by genomic alterations that result in aberrant transcription factor activity. Here, we used functional genomic screens to identify multiple genes within the transcriptional coactivator Spt-Ada-Gcn5-acetyltransferase (SAGA) complex as selective dependencies for MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma, a disease of dysregulated development driven by an aberrant oncogenic transcriptional program. We characterized the DNA recruitment sites of the SAGA complex in neuroblastoma and the consequences of loss of SAGA complex lysine acetyltransferase (KAT) activity on histone acetylation and gene expression. We demonstrate that loss of SAGA complex KAT activity is associated with reduced MYCN binding on chromatin, suppression of …

Variant-Specific Pathophysiological Mechanisms Of Aff3 Differently Influence Transcriptome Profiles, Sissy Bassani, Jacqueline Chrast, Giovanna Ambrosini, Norine Voisin, Frédéric Schütz, Alfredo Brusco, Fabio Sirchia, Lydia Turban, Susanna Schubert, Rami Abou Jamra, Jan-Ulrich Schlump, Desiree Demille, Pinar Bayrak-Toydemir, Gary Rex Nelson, Kristen Nicole Wong, Laura Duncan, Mackenzie Mosera, Christian Gilissen, Lisenka E L M Vissers, Rolph Pfundt, Rogier Kersseboom, Hilde Yttervik, Geir Åsmund Myge Hansen, Marie Falkenberg Smeland, Kameryn M Butler, Michael J Lyons, Claudia M B Carvalho, Chaofan Zhang, James R Lupski, Lorraine Potocki, Leticia Flores-Gallegos, Rodrigo Morales-Toquero, Florence Petit, Binnaz Yalcin, Annabelle Tuttle, Houda Zghal Elloumi, Lane Mccormick, Mary Kukolich, Oliver Klaas, Judit Horvath, Marcello Scala, Michele Iacomino, Francesca Operto, Federico Zara, Karin Writzl, Aleš Maver, Maria K Haanpää, Pia Pohjola, Harri Arikka, Anneke J A Kievit, Camilla Calandrini, Christian Iseli, Nicolas Guex, Alexandre Reymond

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: We previously described the KINSSHIP syndrome, an autosomal dominant disorder associated with intellectual disability (ID), mesomelic dysplasia and horseshoe kidney, caused by de novo variants in the degron of AFF3. Mouse knock-ins and overexpression in zebrafish provided evidence for a dominant-negative mode of action, wherein an increased level of AFF3 resulted in pathological effects.

METHODS: Evolutionary constraints suggest that other modes-of-inheritance could be at play. We challenged this hypothesis by screening ID cohorts for individuals with predicted-to-be damaging variants in AFF3. We used both animal and cellular models to assess the deleteriousness of the identified variants.

RESULTS: We identified …

Profiling Complex Repeat Expansions In Rfc1 In Parkinson’S Disease, Pilar Alvarez Jerez, Kensuke Daida, Abigail Miano-Burkhardt, Hirotaka Iwaki, Laksh Malik, Guillaume Cogan, Mary B Makarious, Roisin Sullivan, Jana Vandrovcova, Jinhui Ding, J Raphael Gibbs, Androo Markham, Mike A Nalls, Rupesh K Kesharwani, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Bradford Casey, John Hardy, Henry Houlden, Cornelis Blauwendraat, Andrew B Singleton, Kimberley J Billingsley

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

A biallelic (AAGGG) expansion in the poly(A) tail of an AluSx3 transposable element within the gene RFC1 is a frequent cause of cerebellar ataxia, neuropathy, vestibular areflexia syndrome (CANVAS), and more recently, has been reported as a rare cause of Parkinson's disease (PD) in the Finnish population. Here, we investigate the prevalence of RFC1 (AAGGG) expansions in PD patients of non-Finnish European ancestry in 1609 individuals from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative study. We identified four PD patients carrying the biallelic RFC1 (AAGGG) expansion and did not identify any carriers in controls.

Integrative Molecular Analyses Of The Md Anderson Prostate Cancer Patient-Derived Xenograft (Mda Pca Pdx) Series, Nicolas Anselmino, Estefania Labanca, Peter D A Shepherd, Jiabin Dong, Jun Yang, Xiaofei Song, Subhiksha Nandakumar, Ritika Kundra, Cindy Lee, Nikolaus Schultz, Jianhua Zhang, John C Araujo, Ana M Aparicio, Sumit K Subudhi, Paul G Corn, Louis L Pisters, John F Ward, John W Davis, Elba S Vazquez, Geraldine Gueron, Christopher J Logothetis, Andrew Futreal, Patricia Troncoso, Yu Chen, Nora M Navone

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

PURPOSE: Develop and deploy a robust discovery platform that encompasses heterogeneity, clinical annotation, and molecular characterization and overcomes the limited availability of prostate cancer models. This initiative builds on the rich MD Anderson (MDA) prostate cancer (PCa) patient-derived xenograft (PDX) resource to complement existing publicly available databases by addressing gaps in clinically annotated models reflecting the heterogeneity of potentially lethal and lethal prostate cancer.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We performed whole-genome, targeted, and RNA sequencing in representative samples of the same tumor from 44 PDXs derived from 38 patients linked to donor tumor metadata and corresponding organoids. The cohort includes models derived …

Mustang: Multi-Sample Spatial Transcriptomics Data Analysis With Cross-Sample Transcriptional Similarity Guidance, Seyednami Niyakan, Jianting Sheng, Yuliang Cao, Xiang Zhang, Zhan Xu, Ling Wu, Stephen T C Wong, Xiaoning Qian

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Spatially resolved transcriptomics has revolutionized genome-scale transcriptomic profiling by providing high-resolution characterization of transcriptional patterns. Here, we present our spatial transcriptomics analysis framework, MUSTANG (MUlti-sample Spatial Transcriptomics data ANalysis with cross-sample transcriptional similarity Guidance), which is capable of performing multi-sample spatial transcriptomics spot cellular deconvolution by allowing both cross-sample expression-based similarity information sharing as well as spatial correlation in gene expression patterns within samples. Experiments on a semi-synthetic spatial transcriptomics dataset and three real-world spatial transcriptomics datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of MUSTANG in revealing biological insights inherent in the cellular characterization of tissue samples under study.

Phenome-Wide Identification Of Therapeutic Genetic Targets, Leveraging Knowledge Graphs, Graph Neural Networks, And Uk Biobank Data, Lawrence Middleton, Ioannis Melas, Chirag Vasavda, Arwa Raies, Benedek Rozemberczki, Ryan S Dhindsa, Justin S Dhindsa, Blake Weido, Quanli Wang, Andrew R Harper, Gavin Edwards, Slavé Petrovski, Dimitrios Vitsios

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The ongoing expansion of human genomic datasets propels therapeutic target identification; however, extracting gene-disease associations from gene annotations remains challenging. Here, we introduce Mantis-ML 2.0, a framework integrating AstraZeneca's Biological Insights Knowledge Graph and numerous tabular datasets, to assess gene-disease probabilities throughout the phenome. We use graph neural networks, capturing the graph's holistic structure, and train them on hundreds of balanced datasets via a robust semi-supervised learning framework to provide gene-disease probabilities across the human exome. Mantis-ML 2.0 incorporates natural language processing to automate disease-relevant feature selection for thousands of diseases. The enhanced models demonstrate a 6.9% average classification power …

Gain-Of-Function And Loss-Of-Function Variants In Gria3 Lead To Distinct Neurodevelopmental Phenotypes, Berardo Rinaldi, Allan Bayat, Linda G Zachariassen, Jia-Hui Sun, Yu-Han Ge, Dan Zhao, Kristine Bonde, Laura H Madsen, Ilham Abdimunim Ali Awad, Duygu Bagiran, Amal Sbeih, Syeda Maidah Shah, Shaymaa El-Sayed, Signe M Lyngby, Miriam G Pedersen, Charlotte Stenum-Berg, Louise Claudia Walker, Ilona Krey, Andrée Delahaye-Duriez, Lisa T Emrick, Krystal Sully, Chaya N Murali, Lindsay C Burrage, Julie Ana Plaud Gonzalez, Mered Parnes, Jennifer Friedman, Bertrand Isidor, Jérémie Lefranc, Sylvia Redon, Delphine Heron, Cyril Mignot, Boris Keren, Mélanie Fradin, Christele Dubourg, Sandra Mercier, Thomas Besnard, Benjamin Cogne, Wallid Deb, Clotilde Rivier, Donatella Milani, Maria Francesca Bedeschi, Claudia Di Napoli, Federico Grilli, Paola Marchisio, Suzanna Koudijs, Danielle Veenma, Emanuela Argilli, Sally Ann Lynch, Ping Yee Billie Au, Fernando Eduardo Ayala Valenzuela, Carolyn Brown, Diane Masser-Frye, Marilyn Jones, Leslie Patron Romero, Wenhui Laura Li, Erin Thorpe, Laura Hecher, Jessika Johannsen, Jonas Denecke, Vanda Mcniven, Anna Szuto, Emma Wakeling, Vincent Cruz, Valerie Sency, Heng Wang, Juliette Piard, Fanny Kortüm, Theresia Herget, Tatjana Bierhals, Angelo Condell, Bruria Ben-Zeev, Simranpreet Kaur, John Christodoulou, Amelie Piton, Christiane Zweier, Cornelia Kraus, Alessia Micalizzi, Marina Trivisano, Nicola Specchio, Gaetan Lesca, Rikke S Møller, Zeynep Tümer, Maria Musgaard, Benedicte Gerard, Johannes R Lemke, Yun Stone Shi, Anders S Kristensen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

AMPA (α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid) receptors (AMPARs) mediate fast excitatory neurotransmission in the brain. AMPARs form by homo- or heteromeric assembly of subunits encoded by the GRIA1–GRIA4 genes, of which only GRIA3 is X-chromosomal. Increasing numbers of GRIA3 missense variants are reported in patients with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), but only a few have been examined functionally.

Here, we evaluated the impact on AMPAR function of one frameshift and 43 rare missense GRIA3 variants identified in patients with NDD by electrophysiological assays. Thirty-one variants alter receptor function and show loss-of-function or gain-of-function properties, whereas 13 appeared neutral.

We collected detailed …

The Clinical Utility And Diagnostic Implementation Of Human Subject Cell Transdifferentiation Followed By Rna Sequencing, Shenglan Li, Sen Zhao, Jefferson C Sinson, Aleksandar Bajic, Jill A Rosenfeld, Matthew B Neeley, Mezthly Pena, Kim C Worley, Lindsay C Burrage, Monika Weisz-Hubshman, Shamika Ketkar, William J Craigen, Gary D Clark, Seema Lalani, Carlos A Bacino, Keren Machol, Hsiao-Tuan Chao, Lorraine Potocki, Lisa Emrick, Jennifer Sheppard, My T T Nguyen, Anahita Khoramnia, Paula Patricia Hernandez, Sandesh Cs Nagamani, Zhandong Liu, Christine M Eng, Brendan Lee, Pengfei Liu

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has recently been used in translational research settings to facilitate diagnoses of Mendelian disorders. A significant obstacle for clinical laboratories in adopting RNA-seq is the low or absent expression of a significant number of disease-associated genes/transcripts in clinically accessible samples. As this is especially problematic in neurological diseases, we developed a clinical diagnostic approach that enhanced the detection and evaluation of tissue-specific genes/transcripts through fibroblast-to-neuron cell transdifferentiation. The approach is designed specifically to suit clinical implementation, emphasizing simplicity, cost effectiveness, turnaround time, and reproducibility. For clinical validation, we generated induced neurons (iNeurons) from 71 individuals with primary …

De Novo Genome Assembly For The Coppery Titi Monkey (Plecturocebus Cupreus): An Emerging Nonhuman Primate Model For Behavioral Research, Susanne P Pfeifer, Alexander Baxter, Logan E Savidge, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Karen L Bales

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The coppery titi monkey (Plecturocebus cupreus) is an emerging nonhuman primate model system for behavioral and neurobiological research. At the same time, the almost entire absence of genomic resources for the species has hampered insights into the genetic underpinnings of the phenotypic traits of interest. To facilitate future genotype-to-phenotype studies, we here present a high-quality, fully annotated de novo genome assembly for the species with chromosome-length scaffolds spanning the autosomes and chromosome X (scaffold N50 = 130.8 Mb), constructed using data obtained from several orthologous short- and long-read sequencing and scaffolding techniques. With a base-level accuracy of ∼99.99% in chromosome-length …

Antihypertensive Medications And Risk Of Melanoma And Keratinocyte Carcinomas: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Olivia G Cohen, Matthew Taylor, Cassandra Mohr, Kevin T Nead, Candice L Hinkston, Sharon H Giordano, Sinead M Langan, David J Margolis, Mackenzie R Wehner

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Some antihypertensive medications are photosensitizing. The implications for skin cancer risk remain unclear because results from prior studies are inconsistent and as new evidence is published. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the association between antihypertensives and common skin cancers (cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, and melanoma) and to evaluate dose-response relationships. Forty-four articles met inclusion criteria, and 42 could be meta analyzed. Increased risks were seen for basal cell carcinoma with calcium channel blockers (relative risk [RR] = 1.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.11-1.22), diuretics (RR = 1.06, 95% CI = 1.03-1.10), and …

Ai-Marrvel - A Knowledge-Driven Ai System For Diagnosing Mendelian Disorders, Dongxue Mao, Chaozhong Liu, Linhua Wang, Rami Ai-Ouran, Cole Deisseroth, Sasidhar Pasupuleti, Seon Young Kim, Lucian Li, Jill A Rosenfeld, Linyan Meng, Lindsay C Burrage, Michael F Wangler, Shinya Yamamoto, Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Michael Santana, Victor Perez, Priyank Shukla, Christine M Eng, Brendan Lee, Bo Yuan, Fan Xia, Hugo J Bellen, Pengfei Liu, Zhandong Liu

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Diagnosing genetic disorders requires extensive manual curation and interpretation of candidate variants, a labor-intensive task even for trained geneticists. Although artificial intelligence (AI) shows promise in aiding these diagnoses, existing AI tools have only achieved moderate success for primary diagnosis.

METHODS: AI-MARRVEL (AIM) uses a random-forest machine-learning classifier trained on over 3.5 million variants from thousands of diagnosed cases. AIM additionally incorporates expert-engineered features into training to recapitulate the intricate decision-making processes in molecular diagnosis. The online version of AIM is available at https://ai.marrvel.org. To evaluate AIM, we benchmarked it with diagnosed patients from three independent cohorts.

RESULTS: AIM …

A Phenome-Wide Association And Mendelian Randomisation Study Of Alcohol Use Variants In A Diverse Cohort Comprising Over 3 Million Individuals, Mariela V Jennings, José Jaime Martínez-Magaña, Natasia S Courchesne-Krak, Renata B Cupertino, Laura Vilar-Ribó, Sevim B Bianchi, Alexander S Hatoum, Elizabeth G Atkinson, Paola Giusti-Rodriguez, Janitza L Montalvo-Ortiz, Joel Gelernter, María Soler Artigas, Sarah L Elson, Howard J Edenberg, Pierre Fontanillas, Abraham A Palmer, Sandra Sanchez-Roige

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Alcohol consumption is associated with numerous negative social and health outcomes. These associations may be direct consequences of drinking, or they may reflect common genetic factors that influence both alcohol consumption and other outcomes.

METHODS: We performed exploratory phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS) of three of the best studied protective single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes encoding ethanol metabolising enzymes (ADH1B: rs1229984-T, rs2066702-A; ADH1C: rs698-T) using up to 1109 health outcomes across 28 phenotypic categories (e.g., substance-use, mental health, sleep, immune, cardiovascular, metabolic) from a diverse 23andMe cohort, including European (N ≤ 2,619,939), Latin American (N ≤ 446,646) and African …

Development Of A Weight-Band Dosing Approach For Vosoritide In Children With Achondroplasia Using A Population Pharmacokinetic Model, Yulan Qi, Ming Liang Chan, Diane R Mould, Kevin Larimore, Elena Fisheleva, Anu Cherukuri, Jonathan Day, Ravi Savarirayan, Melita Irving, Carlos A Bacino, Julie Hoover-Fong, Keiichi Ozono, Klaus Mohnike, William R Wilcox, Michael B Bober, Joshua Henshaw

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Vosoritide is a recently approved therapy for achondroplasia, the most common form of disproportionate short stature, that has been shown to be well tolerated and effective in increasing linear growth. This study aimed to develop a population pharmacokinetic (PPK) model to characterize pharmacokinetics (PK) of vosoritide and establish a weight-band dosing regimen.

METHODS: A PPK model was developed using data from five clinical trials in children with achondroplasia (aged 0.95-15 years) who received daily per-kg doses of vosoritide. The model was used to simulate expected exposures in children with a refined weight-band dosing regimen. Simulated exposure was …

Genome-Wide Association Analyses Identify 95 Risk Loci And Provide Insights Into The Neurobiology Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Caroline M Nievergelt, Adam X Maihofer, Elizabeth G Atkinson, Chia-Yen Chen, Karmel W Choi, Jonathan R I Coleman, Nikolaos P Daskalakis, Laramie E Duncan, Renato Polimanti, Cindy Aaronson, Ananda B Amstadter, Soren B Andersen, Ole A Andreassen, Paul A Arbisi, Allison E Ashley-Koch, S Bryn Austin, Esmina Avdibegoviç, Dragan Babić, Silviu-Alin Bacanu, Dewleen G Baker, Anthony Batzler, Jean C Beckham, Sintia Belangero, Corina Benjet, Carisa Bergner, Linda M Bierer, Joanna M Biernacka, Laura J Bierut, Jonathan I Bisson, Marco P Boks, Elizabeth A Bolger, Amber Brandolino, Gerome Breen, Rodrigo Affonseca Bressan, Richard A Bryant, Angela C Bustamante, Jonas Bybjerg-Grauholm, Marie Bækvad-Hansen, Anders D Børglum, Sigrid Børte, Leah Cahn, Joseph R Calabrese, Jose Miguel Caldas-De-Almeida, Chris Chatzinakos, Sheraz Cheema, Sean A P Clouston, Lucía Colodro-Conde, Brandon J Coombes, Carlos S Cruz-Fuentes, Anders M Dale, Shareefa Dalvie, Lea K Davis, Jürgen Deckert, Douglas L Delahanty, Michelle F Dennis, Frank Desarnaud, Christopher P Dipietro, Seth G Disner, Anna R Docherty, Katharina Domschke, Grete Dyb, Alma Džubur Kulenović, Howard J Edenberg, Alexandra Evans, Chiara Fabbri, Negar Fani, Lindsay A Farrer, Adriana Feder, Norah C Feeny, Janine D Flory, David Forbes, Carol E Franz, Sandro Galea, Melanie E Garrett, Bizu Gelaye, Joel Gelernter, Elbert Geuze, Charles F Gillespie, Slavina B Goleva, Scott D Gordon, Aferdita Goçi, Lana Ruvolo Grasser, Camila Guindalini, Magali Haas, Saskia Hagenaars, Michael A Hauser, Andrew C Heath, Sian M J Hemmings, Victor Hesselbrock, Ian B Hickie, Kelleigh Hogan, David Michael Hougaard, Hailiang Huang, Laura M Huckins, Kristian Hveem, Miro Jakovljević, Arash Javanbakht, Gregory D Jenkins, Jessica Johnson, Ian Jones, Tanja Jovanovic, Karen-Inge Karstoft, Milissa L Kaufman, James L Kennedy, Ronald C Kessler, Alaptagin Khan, Nathan A Kimbrel, Anthony P King, Nastassja Koen, Roman Kotov, Henry R Kranzler, Kristi Krebs, William S Kremen, Pei-Fen Kuan, Bruce R Lawford, Lauren A M Lebois, Kelli Lehto, Daniel F Levey, Catrin Lewis, Israel Liberzon, Sarah D Linnstaedt, Mark W Logue, Adriana Lori, Yi Lu, Benjamin J Luft, Michelle K Lupton, Jurjen J Luykx, Iouri Makotkine, Jessica L Maples-Keller, Shelby Marchese, Charles Marmar, Nicholas G Martin, Gabriela A Martínez-Levy, Kerrie Mcaloney, Alexander Mcfarlane, Katie A Mclaughlin, Samuel A Mclean, Sarah E Medland, Divya Mehta, Jacquelyn Meyers, Vasiliki Michopoulos, Elizabeth A Mikita, Lili Milani, William Milberg, Mark W Miller, Rajendra A Morey, Charles Phillip Morris, Ole Mors, Preben Bo Mortensen, Mary S Mufford, Elliot C Nelson, Merete Nordentoft, Sonya B Norman, Nicole R Nugent, Meaghan O'Donnell, Holly K Orcutt, Pedro M Pan, Matthew S Panizzon, Gita A Pathak, Edward S Peters, Alan L Peterson, Matthew Peverill, Robert H Pietrzak, Melissa A Polusny, Bernice Porjesz, Abigail Powers, Xue-Jun Qin, Andrew Ratanatharathorn, Victoria B Risbrough, Andrea L Roberts, Alex O Rothbaum, Barbara O Rothbaum, Peter Roy-Byrne, Kenneth J Ruggiero, Ariane Rung, Heiko Runz, Bart P F Rutten, Stacey Saenz De Viteri, Giovanni Abrahão Salum, Laura Sampson, Sixto E Sanchez, Marcos Santoro, Carina Seah, Soraya Seedat, Julia S Seng, Andrey Shabalin, Christina M Sheerin, Derrick Silove, Alicia K Smith, Jordan W Smoller, Scott R Sponheim, Dan J Stein, Synne Stensland, Jennifer S Stevens, Jennifer A Sumner, Martin H Teicher, Wesley K Thompson, Arun K Tiwari, Edward Trapido, Monica Uddin, Robert J Ursano, Unnur Valdimarsdóttir, Miranda Van Hooff, Eric Vermetten, Christiaan H Vinkers, Joanne Voisey, Yunpeng Wang, Zhewu Wang, Monika Waszczuk, Heike Weber, Frank R Wendt, Thomas Werge, Michelle A Williams, Douglas E Williamson, Bendik S Winsvold, Sherry Winternitz, Christiane Wolf, Erika J Wolf, Yan Xia, Ying Xiong, Rachel Yehuda, Keith A Young, Ross Mcd Young, Clement C Zai, Gwyneth C Zai, Mark Zervas, Hongyu Zhao, Lori A Zoellner, John-Anker Zwart, Terri Deroon-Cassini, Sanne J H Van Rooij, Leigh L Van Den Heuvel, Murray B Stein, Kerry J Ressler, Karestan C Koenen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetics are characterized by lower discoverability than most other psychiatric disorders. The contribution to biological understanding from previous genetic studies has thus been limited. We performed a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies across 1,222,882 individuals of European ancestry (137,136 cases) and 58,051 admixed individuals with African and Native American ancestry (13,624 cases). We identified 95 genome-wide significant loci (80 new). Convergent multi-omic approaches identified 43 potential causal genes, broadly classified as neurotransmitter and ion channel synaptic modulators (for example, GRIA1, GRM8 and CACNA1E), developmental, axon guidance and transcription factors (for example, FOXP2, EFNA5 and DCC), …

Core Planar Cell Polarity Genes Vangl1 And Vangl2 In Predisposition To Congenital Vertebral Malformations, Xin Feng, Yongyu Ye, Jianan Zhang, Yuanqiang Zhang, Sen Zhao, Judith C W Mak, Nao Otomo, Zhengye Zhao, Yuchen Niu, Yoshiro Yonezawa, Guozhuang Li, Mao Lin, Xiaoxin Li, Prudence Wing Hang Cheung, Kexin Xu, Kazuki Takeda, Shengru Wang, Junjie Xie, Toshiaki Kotani, Vanessa N T Choi, You-Qiang Song, Yang Yang, Keith Dip Kei Luk, Kin Shing Lee, Ziquan Li, Pik Shan Li, Connie Y H Leung, Xiaochen Lin, Xiaolu Wang, Guixing Qiu, Disco (Deciphering Disorders Involving Scoliosis And Comorbidities) Study Group, Kota Watanabe, Japanese Early Onset Scoliosis Research Group, Zhihong Wu, Jennifer E Posey, Shiro Ikegawa, James R Lupski, Jason Pui Yin Cheung, Terry Jianguo Zhang, Bo Gao, Nan Wu

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Congenital scoliosis (CS) is the most common congenital spinal disorder caused by congenital vertebral malformations (CVMs), influenced by genetic and environmental factors and exhibiting diverse clinical presentations. Here, we identified the critical roles of Vangl1 and Vangl2, two core components in the Wnt/planar cell polarity (Wnt/PCP) signaling pathway, in vertebral development and in predisposition to CVMs in CS patients. We found that in Vangl mutant mouse models, the CVMs present in a Vangl gene dose- and gestational hypoxia-dependent manner. Our studies reveal a complex etiology of CS and its association with Wnt/PCP signaling.

Critical Assessment Of Variant Prioritization Methods For Rare Disease Diagnosis Within The Rare Genomes Project, Sarah L Stenton, Melanie C O'Leary, Gabrielle Lemire, Grace E Vannoy, Stephanie Ditroia, Vijay S Ganesh, Emily Groopman, Emily O'Heir, Brian Mangilog, Ikeoluwa Osei-Owusu, Lynn S Pais, Jillian Serrano, Moriel Singer-Berk, Ben Weisburd, Michael W Wilson, Christina Austin-Tse, Marwa Abdelhakim, Azza Althagafi, Giulia Babbi, Riccardo Bellazzi, Samuele Bovo, Maria Giulia Carta, Rita Casadio, Pieter-Jan Coenen, Federica De Paoli, Matteo Floris, Manavalan Gajapathy, Robert Hoehndorf, Julius O B Jacobsen, Thomas Joseph, Akash Kamandula, Panagiotis Katsonis, Cyrielle Kint, Olivier Lichtarge, Ivan Limongelli, Yulan Lu, Paolo Magni, Tarun Karthik Kumar Mamidi, Pier Luigi Martelli, Marta Mulargia, Giovanna Nicora, Keith Nykamp, Vikas Pejaver, Yisu Peng, Thi Hong Cam Pham, Maurizio S Podda, Aditya Rao, Ettore Rizzo, Vangala G Saipradeep, Castrense Savojardo, Peter Schols, Yang Shen, Naveen Sivadasan, Damian Smedley, Dorian Soru, Rajgopal Srinivasan, Yuanfei Sun, Uma Sunderam, Wuwei Tan, Naina Tiwari, Xiao Wang, Yaqiong Wang, Amanda Williams, Elizabeth A Worthey, Rujie Yin, Yuning You, Daniel Zeiberg, Susanna Zucca, Constantina Bakolitsa, Steven E Brenner, Stephanie M Fullerton, Predrag Radivojac, Heidi L Rehm, Anne O'Donnell-Luria

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: A major obstacle faced by families with rare diseases is obtaining a genetic diagnosis. The average "diagnostic odyssey" lasts over five years and causal variants are identified in under 50%, even when capturing variants genome-wide. To aid in the interpretation and prioritization of the vast number of variants detected, computational methods are proliferating. Knowing which tools are most effective remains unclear. To evaluate the performance of computational methods, and to encourage innovation in method development, we designed a Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI) community challenge to place variant prioritization models head-to-head in a real-life clinical diagnostic setting.

METHODS: …

Advanced Nano-Drug Delivery Systems In The Treatment Of Ischemic Stroke, Jiajie Zhang, Zhong Chen, Qi Chen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

In recent years, the frequency of strokes has been on the rise year by year and has become the second leading cause of death around the world, which is characterized by a high mortality rate, high recurrence rate, and high disability rate. Ischemic strokes account for a large percentage of strokes. A reperfusion injury in ischemic strokes is a complex cascade of oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, immune infiltration, and mitochondrial damage. Conventional treatments are ineffective, and the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) leads to inefficient drug delivery utilization, so researchers are turning their attention to nano-drug delivery systems. Functionalized nano-drug …