1
|
Wojcik GL, Korpe P, Marie C, Mentzer AJ, Carstensen T, Mychaleckyj J, Kirkpatrick BD, Rich SS, Concannon P, Faruque ASG, Haque R, Petri WA, Duggal P. Genome-Wide Association Study of Cryptosporidiosis in Infants Implicates PRKCA. mBio 2020; 11:e03343-19. [PMID: 32019797 PMCID: PMC7002356 DOI: 10.1128/mbio.03343-19] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/22/2019] [Accepted: 01/02/2020] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Diarrhea is a major cause of both morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially among young children. Cryptosporidiosis is a leading cause of diarrhea in children, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where it is responsible for over 200,000 deaths per year. Beyond the initial clinical presentation of diarrhea, it is associated with long-term sequelae such as malnutrition and neurocognitive developmental deficits. Risk factors include poverty and overcrowding, and yet not all children with these risk factors and exposure are infected, nor do all infected children develop symptomatic disease. One potential risk factor to explain these differences is their human genome. To identify genetic variants associated with symptomatic cryptosporidiosis, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) examining 6.5 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 873 children from three independent cohorts in Dhaka, Bangladesh, namely, the Dhaka Birth Cohort (DBC), the Performance of Rotavirus and Oral Polio Vaccines in Developing Countries (PROVIDE) study, and the Cryptosporidiosis Birth Cohort (CBC). Associations were estimated separately for each cohort under an additive model, adjusting for length-for-age Z-score at 12 months of age, the first two principal components to account for population substructure, and genotyping batch. The strongest meta-analytic association was with rs58296998 (P = 3.73 × 10-8), an intronic SNP and expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) of protein kinase C alpha (PRKCA). Each additional risk allele conferred 2.4 times the odds of Cryptosporidium-associated diarrhea in the first year of life. This genetic association suggests a role for protein kinase C alpha in pediatric cryptosporidiosis and warrants further investigation.IMPORTANCE Globally, diarrhea remains one of the major causes of pediatric morbidity and mortality. The initial symptoms of diarrhea can often lead to long-term consequences for the health of young children, such as malnutrition and neurocognitive developmental deficits. Despite many children having similar exposures to infectious causes of diarrhea, not all develop symptomatic disease, indicating a possible role for human genetic variation. Here, we conducted a genetic study of susceptibility to symptomatic disease associated with Cryptosporidium infection (a leading cause of diarrhea) in three independent cohorts of infants from Dhaka, Bangladesh. We identified a genetic variant within protein kinase C alpha (PRKCA) associated with higher risk of cryptosporidiosis in the first year of life. These results indicate a role for human genetics in susceptibility to cryptosporidiosis and warrant further research to elucidate the mechanism.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Genevieve L Wojcik
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
| | - Poonum Korpe
- Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
| | - Chelsea Marie
- Department of Medicine, Infectious Diseases and International Health, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
| | - Alexander J Mentzer
- Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- Big Data Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Tommy Carstensen
- Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| | - Josyf Mychaleckyj
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
| | - Beth D Kirkpatrick
- University of Vermont College of Medicine and Vaccine Testing Center, Burlington, Vermont, USA
| | - Stephen S Rich
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
| | - Patrick Concannon
- Genetics Institute and Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
| | - A S G Faruque
- International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh
| | - Rashidul Haque
- International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh
| | - William A Petri
- Department of Medicine, Infectious Diseases and International Health, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
| | - Priya Duggal
- Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Protein targets of thiazolidinone derivatives in Toxoplasma gondii and insights into their binding to ROP18. BMC Genomics 2018; 19:856. [PMID: 30497375 PMCID: PMC6267824 DOI: 10.1186/s12864-018-5223-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/10/2018] [Accepted: 11/05/2018] [Indexed: 01/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Background Thiazolidinone derivatives show inhibitory activity (IC50) against the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, as well as high selectivity with high therapeutic index. To disclose the target proteins of the thiazolidinone core in this parasite, we explored in silico the active sites of different T. gondii proteins and estimated the binding-free energy of reported thiazolidinone molecules with inhibitory effect on invasion and replication of the parasite inside host cells. This enabled us to describe some of the most suitable structural characteristics to design a compound derived from the thiazolidinone core. Results The best binding affinity was observed in the active site of kinase proteins, we selected the active site of the T. gondii ROP18 kinase, because it is an important factor for the virulence and survival of the parasite. We present the possible effect of a derivative of thiazolidinone core in the active site of T. gondii ROP18 and described some characteristics of substituent groups that could improve the affinity and specificity of compounds derived from the thiazolidinone core against T. gondii. Conclusions The results of our study suggest that compounds derived from the thiazolidinone core have a preference for protein kinases of T. gondii, being promising compounds for the development of new drugs with potential anti-toxoplasmosis activity. Our findings highlight the importance of use computational studies for the understanding of the action mechanism of compounds with biological activity. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-018-5223-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Collapse
|