Cell-type-specific enrichment of somatic aneuploidy in the mammalian brain.

Abstract

Somatic mutations alter the genomes of a subset of an individual's brain cells, impacting gene regulation and contributing to disease processes. Mosaic single-nucleotide variants have been characterized with single-cell resolution in the brain, but we have limited information about large-scale structural variation such as whole-chromosome duplication or loss. We used a dataset of over 415,000 single-cell DNA methylation and chromatin conformation profiles from the adult mouse brain to comprehensively identify and characterize aneuploid cells. Somatic trisomy events were strongly enriched on chromosome 16, which is syntenic with human chromosome 21. We also observed a specific enrichment of chromosome gain and loss events in specific cell types, including Pons neurons and oligodendrocyte precursor cells. Chromosome 16 trisomy occurred in multiple cell types and across brain regions, suggesting that nondisjunction is a recurrent feature of somatic structural variation in the brain.