Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-03-08DOI: 10.1007/s00439-025-02731-3
Shantanu Jain, Marena Trinidad, Thanh Binh Nguyen, Kaiya Jones, Santiago Diaz Neto, Fang Ge, Ailin Glagovsky, Cameron Jones, Giankaleb Moran, Boqi Wang, Kobra Rahimi, Sümeyra Zeynep Çalıcı, Luis R Cedillo, Silvia Berardelli, Buse Özden, Ken Chen, Panagiotis Katsonis, Amanda Williams, Olivier Lichtarge, Sadhna Rana, Swatantra Pradhan, Rajgopal Srinivasan, Rakshanda Sajeed, Dinesh Joshi, Eshel Faraggi, Robert Jernigan, Andrzej Kloczkowski, Jierui Xu, Zigang Song, Selen Özkan, Natàlia Padilla, Xavier de la Cruz, Rocio Acuna-Hidalgo, Andrea Grafmüller, Laura T Jiménez Barrón, Matteo Manfredi, Castrense Savojardo, Giulia Babbi, Pier Luigi Martelli, Rita Casadio, Yuanfei Sun, Shaowen Zhu, Yang Shen, Fabrizio Pucci, Marianne Rooman, Gabriel Cia, Daniele Raimondi, Pauline Hermans, Sofia Kwee, Ella Chen, Courtney Astore, Akash Kamandula, Vikas Pejaver, Rashika Ramola, Michelle Velyunskiy, Daniel Zeiberg, Reet Mishra, Teague Sterling, Jennifer L Goldstein, Jose Lugo-Martinez, Sufyan Kazi, Sindy Li, Kinsey Long, Steven E Brenner, Constantina Bakolitsa, Predrag Radivojac, Dean Suhr, Teryn Suhr, Wyatt T Clark
{"title":"Evaluation of enzyme activity predictions for variants of unknown significance in Arylsulfatase A.","authors":"Shantanu Jain, Marena Trinidad, Thanh Binh Nguyen, Kaiya Jones, Santiago Diaz Neto, Fang Ge, Ailin Glagovsky, Cameron Jones, Giankaleb Moran, Boqi Wang, Kobra Rahimi, Sümeyra Zeynep Çalıcı, Luis R Cedillo, Silvia Berardelli, Buse Özden, Ken Chen, Panagiotis Katsonis, Amanda Williams, Olivier Lichtarge, Sadhna Rana, Swatantra Pradhan, Rajgopal Srinivasan, Rakshanda Sajeed, Dinesh Joshi, Eshel Faraggi, Robert Jernigan, Andrzej Kloczkowski, Jierui Xu, Zigang Song, Selen Özkan, Natàlia Padilla, Xavier de la Cruz, Rocio Acuna-Hidalgo, Andrea Grafmüller, Laura T Jiménez Barrón, Matteo Manfredi, Castrense Savojardo, Giulia Babbi, Pier Luigi Martelli, Rita Casadio, Yuanfei Sun, Shaowen Zhu, Yang Shen, Fabrizio Pucci, Marianne Rooman, Gabriel Cia, Daniele Raimondi, Pauline Hermans, Sofia Kwee, Ella Chen, Courtney Astore, Akash Kamandula, Vikas Pejaver, Rashika Ramola, Michelle Velyunskiy, Daniel Zeiberg, Reet Mishra, Teague Sterling, Jennifer L Goldstein, Jose Lugo-Martinez, Sufyan Kazi, Sindy Li, Kinsey Long, Steven E Brenner, Constantina Bakolitsa, Predrag Radivojac, Dean Suhr, Teryn Suhr, Wyatt T Clark","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02731-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00439-025-02731-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Continued advances in variant effect prediction are necessary to demonstrate the ability of machine learning methods to accurately determine the clinical impact of variants of unknown significance (VUS). Towards this goal, the ARSA Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI) challenge was designed to characterize progress by utilizing 219 experimentally assayed missense VUS in the Arylsulfatase A (ARSA) gene to assess the performance of community-submitted predictions of variant functional effects. The challenge involved 15 teams, and evaluated additional predictions from established and recently released models. Notably, a model developed by participants of a genetics and coding bootcamp, trained with standard machine-learning tools in Python, demonstrated superior performance among submissions. Furthermore, the study observed that state-of-the-art deep learning methods provided small but statistically significant improvement in predictive performance compared to less elaborate techniques. These findings underscore the utility of variant effect prediction, and the potential for models trained with modest resources to accurately classify VUS in genetic and clinical research.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143585545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mendelian randomization analysis and molecular mechanism study of childhood asthma and obstructive sleep apnea.","authors":"Xinyu Wang, Lin Zhang, Hao Chen, Ting Tian, Lulu Wu, Yuping Huang, Qian Cao, Lili Zhuang, Guoping Zhou","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02734-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-025-02734-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Childhood asthma is a common chronic respiratory disorder influenced by various factors, and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has emerged as a significant comorbidity. This study sought to investigate the underlying molecular mechanisms of the comorbidity between childhood asthma and OSA through Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. Gene expression and genotype data were analyzed from public databases, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to both diseases were identified. Our research findings unveiled 242 gene pairs associated with childhood asthma and 350 gene pairs related to OSA. Among them, the three hub genes, namely LRP3, BAK1, and CLIC4, exhibited significant expression alterations in both diseases. These hub genes participate in multiple signal transduction pathways and exhibit a remarkable correlation with the infiltration of immune cells, suggesting that they exert a vital role in modulating the immune microenvironment. Further analyses, encompassing gene set enrichment and transcriptional regulation, emphasized the complex interplay between these genes and non-coding RNAs as well as transcription factors. Our study results stressed the bidirectional relationship between childhood asthma and OSA and accentuated the significance of early identification and targeted intervention. This study identified potential therapeutic targets and laid a foundation for formulating treatment strategies aimed at improving the conditions of children with these interrelated diseases.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143541785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-02-28DOI: 10.1007/s00439-025-02733-1
Maria Cristina Aspromonte, Alessio Del Conte, Roberta Polli, Demetrio Baldo, Francesco Benedicenti, Elisa Bettella, Stefania Bigoni, Stefania Boni, Claudia Ciaccio, Stefano D'Arrigo, Ilaria Donati, Elisa Granocchio, Isabella Mammi, Donatella Milani, Susanna Negrin, Margherita Nosadini, Fiorenza Soli, Franco Stanzial, Licia Turolla, Damiano Piovesan, Silvio C E Tosatto, Alessandra Murgia, Emanuela Leonardi
{"title":"Genetic variants and phenotypic data curated for the CAGI6 intellectual disability panel challenge.","authors":"Maria Cristina Aspromonte, Alessio Del Conte, Roberta Polli, Demetrio Baldo, Francesco Benedicenti, Elisa Bettella, Stefania Bigoni, Stefania Boni, Claudia Ciaccio, Stefano D'Arrigo, Ilaria Donati, Elisa Granocchio, Isabella Mammi, Donatella Milani, Susanna Negrin, Margherita Nosadini, Fiorenza Soli, Franco Stanzial, Licia Turolla, Damiano Piovesan, Silvio C E Tosatto, Alessandra Murgia, Emanuela Leonardi","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02733-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-025-02733-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) are common conditions including clinically diverse and genetically heterogeneous diseases, such as intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, and epilepsy. The intricate genetic underpinnings of NDDs pose a formidable challenge, given their multifaceted genetic architecture and heterogeneous clinical presentations. This work delves into the intricate interplay between genetic variants and phenotypic manifestations in neurodevelopmental disorders, presenting a dataset curated for the Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI6) ID Panel Challenge. The CAGI6 competition serves as a platform for evaluating the efficacy of computational methods in predicting phenotypic outcomes from genetic data. In this study, a targeted gene panel sequencing has been used to investigate the genetic causes of NDDs in a cohort of 415 paediatric patients. We identified 60 pathogenic and 49 likely pathogenic variants in 102 individuals that accounted for 25% of NDD cases in the cohort. The most mutated genes were ANKRD11, MECP2, ARID1B, ASH1L, CHD8, KDM5C, MED12 and PTCHD1 The majority of pathogenic variants were de novo, with some inherited from mildly affected parents. Loss-of-function variants were the most common type of pathogenic variant. In silico analysis tools were used to assess the potential impact of variants on splicing and structural/functional effects of missense variants. The study highlights the challenges in variant interpretation especially in cases with atypical phenotypic manifestations. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the genetic causes of NDDs and emphasises the importance of understanding the underlying genetic factors for accurate diagnosis, and intervention development in neurodevelopmental conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143523342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-02-20DOI: 10.1007/s00439-024-02724-8
Paola Turina, Maria Petrosino, Carlos A Enriquez Sandoval, Leonore Novak, Alessandra Pasquo, Emil Alexov, Muttaqi Ahmad Alladin, David B Ascher, Giulia Babbi, Constantina Bakolitsa, Rita Casadio, Jianlin Cheng, Piero Fariselli, Lukas Folkman, Akash Kamandula, Panagiotis Katsonis, Minghui Li, Dong Li, Olivier Lichtarge, Sajid Mahmud, Pier Luigi Martelli, Debnath Pal, Shailesh Kumar Panday, Douglas E V Pires, Stephanie Portelli, Fabrizio Pucci, Carlos H M Rodrigues, Marianne Rooman, Castrense Savojardo, Martin Schwersensky, Yang Shen, Alexey V Strokach, Yuanfei Sun, Junwoo Woo, Predrag Radivojac, Steven E Brenner, Roberta Chiaraluce, Valerio Consalvi, Emidio Capriotti
{"title":"Assessing the predicted impact of single amino acid substitutions in MAPK proteins for CAGI6 challenges.","authors":"Paola Turina, Maria Petrosino, Carlos A Enriquez Sandoval, Leonore Novak, Alessandra Pasquo, Emil Alexov, Muttaqi Ahmad Alladin, David B Ascher, Giulia Babbi, Constantina Bakolitsa, Rita Casadio, Jianlin Cheng, Piero Fariselli, Lukas Folkman, Akash Kamandula, Panagiotis Katsonis, Minghui Li, Dong Li, Olivier Lichtarge, Sajid Mahmud, Pier Luigi Martelli, Debnath Pal, Shailesh Kumar Panday, Douglas E V Pires, Stephanie Portelli, Fabrizio Pucci, Carlos H M Rodrigues, Marianne Rooman, Castrense Savojardo, Martin Schwersensky, Yang Shen, Alexey V Strokach, Yuanfei Sun, Junwoo Woo, Predrag Radivojac, Steven E Brenner, Roberta Chiaraluce, Valerio Consalvi, Emidio Capriotti","doi":"10.1007/s00439-024-02724-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00439-024-02724-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>New thermodynamic and functional studies have been recently conducted to evaluate the impact of amino acid substitutions on the Mitogen Activated Protein Kinases 1 and 3 (MAPK1/3). The Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI) data provider, at Sapienza University of Rome, measured the unfolding free energy and the enzymatic activity of a set of variants (MAPK challenge dataset). Thermodynamic measurements for the denaturant-induced equilibrium unfolding of the phosphorylated and unphosphorylated forms of the MAPKs were obtained by monitoring the far-UV circular dichroism and intrinsic fluorescence changes as a function of denaturant concentration. These values have been used to calculate the change in unfolding free energy between the variant and wild-type proteins at zero concentration of denaturant ( <math><mrow><mi>Δ</mi> <mi>Δ</mi> <msup><mi>G</mi> <mrow><msub><mtext>H</mtext> <mn>2</mn></msub> <mtext>O</mtext></mrow> </msup> </mrow> </math> ). The enzymatic activity of the phosphorylated MAPKs variants was also measured using Chelation-Enhanced Fluorescence to monitor the phosphorylation of a peptide substrate. The MAPK challenge dataset, composed of a total of 23 single amino acid substitutions (11 and 12 for MAPK1 and MAPK3, respectively), was used to assess the effectiveness of the computational methods in predicting the <math><mrow><mi>Δ</mi> <mi>Δ</mi> <msup><mi>G</mi> <mrow><msub><mtext>H</mtext> <mn>2</mn></msub> <mtext>O</mtext></mrow> </msup> </mrow> </math> values, associated with the variants, and categorize them as destabilizing and not destabilizing. The data on the enzymatic activity of the MAPKs mutants were used to assess the performance of the methods for predicting the functional impact of the variants. For the sixth edition of CAGI, thirteen independent research groups from four continents (Asia, Australia, Europe and North America) submitted > 80 sets of predictions, obtained from different approaches. In this manuscript, we summarized the results of our assessment to highlight the possible limitations of the available algorithms.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143457846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-02-19DOI: 10.1007/s00439-025-02728-y
Weili Wang, Jing Dai, Xiao Hu, Wenbin He, Yifan Gu, Zhenxing Wan, Yi Zhang, Keli Luo, Wen Li, Qianjun Zhang, Fei Gong, Guangxiu Lu, Liang Hu, Yue-Qiu Tan, Ge Lin, Juan Du
{"title":"Decade-long application of preimplantation genetic testing for DMD/BMD: analysis of five clinical strategies and embryo recombination patterns.","authors":"Weili Wang, Jing Dai, Xiao Hu, Wenbin He, Yifan Gu, Zhenxing Wan, Yi Zhang, Keli Luo, Wen Li, Qianjun Zhang, Fei Gong, Guangxiu Lu, Liang Hu, Yue-Qiu Tan, Ge Lin, Juan Du","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02728-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-025-02728-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study aimed to find the most effective PGT-M strategy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy/Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD), and to reduce misdiagnosis caused by embryo recombination in DMD. A retrospective study was performed by analyzing 158 PGT-M cycles for DMD/BMD in Reproductive and Genetic Hospital of CITIC-Xiangya between 2009 and 2023. Patients' backgrounds were collected. The effectiveness and safety for five different PGT-M strategies (1-5), including mutation testing from cleavage or trophoblast ectoderm (TE) cells and additional linkage analysis post-TE cell amplification, were analyzed. The embryonic recombination events were assessed for these cycles. Mutation analysis showed that 62.4% of the 125 families had DMD deletions, 16.0% had duplications, and 21.6% had single nucleotide variants (SNVs). Among 125 families, 104 (83.2%) had previously affected fetus or offspring. The highest diagnosis rate (99.56%) was achieved with Strategy 5, which combined mutation testing with SNP-based linkage analysis in TE cells. This strategy 5 also demonstrated an advantage in cases with recombination near the mutation. An intragenic recombination rate of 5.5% was observed in embryos, predominantly in the hotspots (exons 45-55 and exons 3-9) of DMD deletion/duplication mutations. Prenatal diagnosis for 52 families and successful outcomes in all 85 healthy deliveries (live birth rate, 65.89%, 85/129) validated the accuracy and effectiveness of PGT-M. This study provides a highly effective PGT-M strategy (Strategy 5) for DMD/BMD by comparing five different strategies, with the diagnostic yield reaching 99.56%. The results underscore the significance of monitoring intragenic recombination in DMD, which is a frequent occurrence in DMD/BMD.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143448848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-02-12DOI: 10.1007/s00439-025-02726-0
Yile Chen, Kyoungyeul Lee, Junwoo Woo, Dong-Wook Kim, Changwon Keum, Giulia Babbi, Rita Casadio, Pier Luigi Martelli, Castrense Savojardo, Matteo Manfredi, Yang Shen, Yuanfei Sun, Panagiotis Katsonis, Olivier Lichtarge, Vikas Pejaver, David J Seward, Akash Kamandula, Constantina Bakolitsa, Steven E Brenner, Predrag Radivojac, Anne O'Donnell-Luria, Sean D Mooney, Shantanu Jain
{"title":"Evaluating predictors of kinase activity of STK11 variants identified in primary human non-small cell lung cancers.","authors":"Yile Chen, Kyoungyeul Lee, Junwoo Woo, Dong-Wook Kim, Changwon Keum, Giulia Babbi, Rita Casadio, Pier Luigi Martelli, Castrense Savojardo, Matteo Manfredi, Yang Shen, Yuanfei Sun, Panagiotis Katsonis, Olivier Lichtarge, Vikas Pejaver, David J Seward, Akash Kamandula, Constantina Bakolitsa, Steven E Brenner, Predrag Radivojac, Anne O'Donnell-Luria, Sean D Mooney, Shantanu Jain","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02726-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00439-025-02726-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Critical evaluation of computational tools for predicting variant effects is important considering their increased use in disease diagnosis and driving molecular discoveries. In the sixth edition of the Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI) challenge, a dataset of 28 STK11 rare variants (27 missense, 1 single amino acid deletion), identified in primary non-small cell lung cancer biopsies, was experimentally assayed to characterize computational methods from four participating teams and five publicly available tools. Predictors demonstrated a high level of performance on key evaluation metrics, measuring correlation with the assay outputs and separating loss-of-function (LoF) variants from wildtype-like (WT-like) variants. The best participant model, 3Cnet, performed competitively with well-known tools. Unique to this challenge was that the functional data was generated with both biological and technical replicates, thus allowing the assessors to realistically establish maximum predictive performance based on experimental variability. Three out of the five publicly available tools and 3Cnet approached the performance of the assay replicates in separating LoF variants from WT-like variants. Surprisingly, REVEL, an often-used model, achieved a comparable correlation with the real-valued assay output as that seen for the experimental replicates. Performing variant interpretation by combining the new functional evidence with computational and population data evidence led to 16 new variants receiving a clinically actionable classification of likely pathogenic (LP) or likely benign (LB). Overall, the STK11 challenge highlights the utility of variant effect predictors in biomedical sciences and provides encouraging results for driving research in the field of computational genome interpretation.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143399119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unilateral, bilateral symmetric or asymmetric isolated hearing loss in patients with heterozygous KITLG variants.","authors":"Margaux Serey-Gaut, Ralyath Balogoun, Laurence Jonard, Geneviève Lina-Granade, Renaud Touraine, Marjolaine Willems, Nicola Hepp, Nanna Dahl Rendtorff, Mette Bertelsen, Natalie Loundon, Vincent Couloigner, Isabelle Lemiere, Judite de Oliveira, Serge Romana, Camille Porteret, Pierre Blanc, Luke Mansard, Sandrine Marlin, Anne-Françoise Roux, Véronique Pingault","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02730-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-025-02730-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>KITLG pathogenic variants have been associated to three distinct clinical presentations with different combinations of hearing loss and/or pigmentation abnormalities. However, its involvement in isolated hearing loss has not been confirmed since its initial description in two families. Besides, KITLG is so far the only gene prevailingly involved in unilateral isolated hearing loss. We therefore conducted a retrospective study of patients with KITLG alterations in the French national Reference Network for Genetic Hearing Loss and one case was added through the Genematcher exchange platform. We describe a series of monoallelic KITLG deletions and variations in a cohort of 14 symptomatic patients from eight unrelated families. All patients presented with unilateral, bilateral symmetric or asymmetric sensorineural hearing loss. When not profound, hearing loss was predominant on low frequencies. Most KITLG alterations are likely to result in loss-of-function and aggregate in the extracellular region, disrupting the KIT-binding domain or its structure. Penetrance is not complete, and unspecific pigmentation alterations were observed in only three patients. The present study confirms KITLG involvement in isolated unilateral, bilateral symmetric or asymmetric hearing loss. This confirmation indicates that genetic testing can be relevant in early-onset, non-sudden, isolated unilateral hearing loss.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143364408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-02-04DOI: 10.1007/s00439-025-02729-x
Arvind Srinivasan, Dorota Magner, Piotr Kozłowski, Anna Philips, Arkadiusz Kajdasz, Paweł Wojciechowski, Marzena Wojciechowska
{"title":"Global dysregulation of circular RNAs in frontal cortex and whole blood from DM1 and DM2.","authors":"Arvind Srinivasan, Dorota Magner, Piotr Kozłowski, Anna Philips, Arkadiusz Kajdasz, Paweł Wojciechowski, Marzena Wojciechowska","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02729-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-025-02729-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and type 2 (DM2) are autosomal dominant neuromuscular disorders associated with expansions of microsatellites, respectively, in DMPK and CNBP. Their pathogenesis is linked to the global aberrant alternative splicing (AAS) of many genes and marks mostly muscular and neuronal tissues, while blood is the least affected. Recent data in DM1 skeletal muscles indicated that abnormalities in RNA metabolism also include global upregulation of circular RNAs (circRNAs). CircRNAs are a heterogeneous group considered splicing errors and by-products of canonical splicing. To elucidate whether circRNA dysregulation is an inherent feature of the myotonic environment, we perform their analysis in the frontal cortex and whole blood of DM1 and DM2 patients. We find a global elevation of circRNAs in both tissues, and its magnitude is neither correlated with the differences in their parental gene expression nor is associated with AAS published earlier. Aberrantly spliced cassette exons of linear transcripts affected in DM1 and DM2 are not among the circularized exons, which unique genomic features prerequisite back-splicing. However, the blueprint of the AAS of linear RNAs is found in a variety of circRNA isoforms. The heterogeneity of circRNAs also originates from the utilization of exonic and intronic cryptic donors/acceptors in back splice junctions, and intron-containing circRNAs are more characteristic of the blood. Overall, this study reveals circRNA dysregulation in various tissues from DM1 and DM2; however, their levels do not correlate with the AAS in linear RNAs, suggesting a potential independent regulatory mechanism underlying circRNA upregulation in myotonic dystrophy.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143189244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An augmented transformer model trained on protein family specific variant data leads to improved prediction of variants of uncertain significance.","authors":"Dinesh Joshi, Swatantra Pradhan, Rakshanda Sajeed, Rajgopal Srinivasan, Sadhna Rana","doi":"10.1007/s00439-025-02727-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00439-025-02727-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Variants of uncertain significance (VUS) represent variants that lack sufficient evidence to be confidently associated with a disease, thus posing a challenge in the interpretation of genetic testing results. Here we report an improved method for predicting the VUS of Arylsulfatase A (ARSA) gene as part of the Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation challenge (CAGI6). Our method uses a transfer learning approach that leverages a pre-trained protein language model to predict the impact of mutations on the activity of the ARSA enzyme, whose deficiency is known to cause a rare genetic disorder, metachromatic leukodystrophy. Our innovative framework combines zero-shot log odds scores and embeddings from the ESM, an evolutionary scale model as features for training a supervised model on gene variants functionally related to the ARSA gene. The zero-shot log odds score feature captures the generic properties of the proteins learned due to its pre-training on millions of sequences in the UniProt data, while the ESM embeddings for the proteins in the ARSA family capture features specific to the family. We also tested our approach on another enzyme, N-acetyl-glucosaminidase (NAGLU), that belongs to the same superfamily as ARSA. Our results demonstrate that the performance of our family models (augmented ESM models) is either comparable or better than the ESM models. The ARSA model compares favorably with the majority of state-of-the-art predictors on area under precision and recall curve (AUPRC) performance metric. However, the NAGLU model outperforms all pathogenicity predictors evaluated in this study on AUPRC metric. The improved AUPRC has relevance in a diagnostic setting where variant prioritization generally entails identifying a small number of pathogenic variants from a larger number of benign variants. Our results also indicate that genes that have sparse or no experimental variant impact data, the family variant data can serve as a proxy training data for making accurate predictions. Attention analysis of active sites and binding sites in ARSA and NAGLU proteins shed light on probable mechanisms of pathogenicity for positions that are highly attended.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143046678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human GeneticsPub Date : 2025-01-22DOI: 10.1007/s00439-024-02725-7
Xiaoyu Wang, Wendu Pang, Xin Hu, Tao Shu, Yaxin Luo, Junhong Li, Lan Feng, Ke Qiu, Yufang Rao, Yao Song, Minzi Mao, Yuyang Zhang, Jianjun Ren, Yu Zhao
{"title":"Conventional and genetic association between migraine and stroke with druggable genome-wide Mendelian randomization.","authors":"Xiaoyu Wang, Wendu Pang, Xin Hu, Tao Shu, Yaxin Luo, Junhong Li, Lan Feng, Ke Qiu, Yufang Rao, Yao Song, Minzi Mao, Yuyang Zhang, Jianjun Ren, Yu Zhao","doi":"10.1007/s00439-024-02725-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-024-02725-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The genetic relationship between migraine and stroke remains underexplored, particularly in the context of druggable targets. Previous studies have been limited by small sample sizes and a lack of focus on genetic-targeted therapies for these conditions. We analyzed the association and causality between migraine and stroke using multivariable logistic regression in the UK Biobank cohort and Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses based on genome-wide association study (GWAS) data. Integrating expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) data from blood and brain regions, we explored the phenotypic and genetic links between migraine medications, drug target, and stroke. Additionally, we explored novel druggable genes for migraine and evaluated their effects on migraine signaling molecules and stroke risk. Migraine was significantly associated with stroke, particularly ischemic stroke (IS) and intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), with MR analysis confirming a causal link to ICH. HTR1A emerged as a potential link between antidepressants (preventive medications for migraine) and stroke. We identified 17 migraine-related druggable genes, with 5 genes (HMGCR, TGFB1, TGFB3, KCNK5, IMPDH2) associated with nine existing drugs. Further MR analysis identified correlation of CELSR3 and IMPDH2 with cGMP pathway marker PRKG1, and identified KCNK5, PLXNB1, and MDK as novel migraine-associated druggable genes significantly linked to the stroke risks. These findings established the phenotypic and genetic link between migraine, its medication and stroke, identifying potential targets for single and dual-purpose therapies for migraine and stoke, and emphasized the need for further research to validate these associations.</p>","PeriodicalId":13175,"journal":{"name":"Human Genetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143004687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}