| 1. |
- Fresard, Laure, et al.
(författare)
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Identification of rare-disease genes using blood transcriptome sequencing and large control cohorts
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Medicine. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 1078-8956 .- 1546-170X. ; 25:6, s. 911-919
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is estimated that 350 million individuals worldwide suffer from rare diseases, which are predominantly caused by mutation in a single gene(1). The current molecular diagnostic rate is estimated at 50%, with whole-exome sequencing (WES) among the most successful approaches(2-5). For patients in whom WES is uninformative, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has shown diagnostic utility in specific tissues and diseases(6-8). This includes muscle biopsies from patients with undiagnosed rare muscle disorders(6,9), and cultured fibroblasts from patients with mitochondrial disorders(7). However, for many individuals, biopsies are not performed for clinical care, and tissues are difficult to access. We sought to assess the utility of RNA-seq from blood as a diagnostic tool for rare diseases of different pathophysiologies. We generated whole-blood RNA-seq from 94 individuals with undiagnosed rare diseases spanning 16 diverse disease categories. We developed a robust approach to compare data from these individuals with large sets of RNA-seq data for controls (n = 1,594 unrelated controls and n = 49 family members) and demonstrated the impacts of expression, splicing, gene and variant filtering strategies on disease gene identification. Across our cohort, we observed that RNA-seq yields a 7.5% diagnostic rate, and an additional 16.7% with improved candidate gene resolution.
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| 2. |
- Johnstone, Devon L., et al.
(författare)
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Early infantile epileptic encephalopathy due to biallelic pathogenic variants in PIGQ : Report of seven new subjects and review of the literature
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease. - : Wiley. - 0141-8955 .- 1573-2665. ; 43:6, s. 1321-1332
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We investigated seven children from six families to expand the phenotypic spectrum associated with an early infantile epileptic encephalopathy caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in the phosphatidylinositol glycan anchor biosynthesis class Q (PIGQ) gene. The affected children were all identified by clinical or research exome sequencing. Clinical data, including EEGs and MRIs, was comprehensively reviewed and flow cytometry and transfection experiments were performed to investigate PIGQ function. Pathogenic biallelic PIGQ variants were associated with increased mortality. Epileptic seizures, axial hypotonia, developmental delay and multiple congenital anomalies were consistently observed. Seizure onset occurred between 2.5 months and 7 months of age and varied from treatable seizures to recurrent episodes of status epilepticus. Gastrointestinal issues were common and severe, two affected individuals had midgut volvulus requiring surgical correction. Cardiac anomalies including arrythmias were observed. Flow cytometry using granulocytes and fibroblasts from affected individuals showed reduced expression of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins. Transfection of wildtype PIGQ cDNA into patient fibroblasts rescued this phenotype. We expand the phenotypic spectrum of PIGQ-related disease and provide the first functional evidence in human cells of defective GPI-anchoring due to pathogenic variants in PIGQ.
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