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Iannuccelli M, Vitriolo A, Licata L, Lo Surdo P, Contino S, Cheroni C, Capocefalo D, Castagnoli L, Testa G, Cesareni G, Perfetto L. Curation of causal interactions mediated by genes associated with autism accelerates the understanding of gene-phenotype relationships underlying neurodevelopmental disorders. Mol Psychiatry 2024; 29:186-196. [PMID: 38102483 PMCID: PMC11078740 DOI: 10.1038/s41380-023-02317-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2023] [Revised: 10/14/2023] [Accepted: 10/31/2023] [Indexed: 12/17/2023]
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) comprises a large group of neurodevelopmental conditions featuring, over a wide range of severity and combinations, a core set of manifestations (restricted sociality, stereotyped behavior and language impairment) alongside various comorbidities. Common and rare variants in several hundreds of genes and regulatory regions have been implicated in the molecular pathogenesis of ASD along a range of causation evidence strength. Despite significant progress in elucidating the impact of few paradigmatic individual loci, such sheer complexity in the genetic architecture underlying ASD as a whole has hampered the identification of convergent actionable hubs hypothesized to relay between the vastness of risk alleles and the core phenotypes. In turn this has limited the development of strategies that can revert or ameliorate this condition, calling for a systems-level approach to probe the cross-talk of cooperating genes in terms of causal interaction networks in order to make convergences experimentally tractable and reveal their clinical actionability. As a first step in this direction, we have captured from the scientific literature information on the causal links between the genes whose variants have been associated with ASD and the whole human proteome. This information has been annotated in a computer readable format in the SIGNOR database and is made freely available in the resource website. To link this information to cell functions and phenotypes, we have developed graph algorithms that estimate the functional distance of any protein in the SIGNOR causal interactome to phenotypes and pathways. The main novelty of our approach resides in the possibility to explore the mechanistic links connecting the suggested gene-phenotype relations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marta Iannuccelli
- Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy
| | - Alessandro Vitriolo
- Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy
- Department of Experimental Oncology, European Institute of Oncology IRCCS, Via Adamello 16, 20139, Milan, Italy
- Department of Oncology and Hemato-Oncology, University of Milan, Via Santa Sofia 9, 20122, Milan, Italy
| | - Luana Licata
- Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy
- Computational Biology Research Centre, Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy
| | - Prisca Lo Surdo
- Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy
- Computational Biology Research Centre, Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy
| | - Silvia Contino
- Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy
| | - Cristina Cheroni
- Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy
- Department of Oncology and Hemato-Oncology, University of Milan, Via Santa Sofia 9, 20122, Milan, Italy
| | - Daniele Capocefalo
- Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy
- Department of Oncology and Hemato-Oncology, University of Milan, Via Santa Sofia 9, 20122, Milan, Italy
| | - Luisa Castagnoli
- Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Testa
- Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy.
- Department of Experimental Oncology, European Institute of Oncology IRCCS, Via Adamello 16, 20139, Milan, Italy.
- Department of Oncology and Hemato-Oncology, University of Milan, Via Santa Sofia 9, 20122, Milan, Italy.
| | - Gianni Cesareni
- Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy.
| | - Livia Perfetto
- Computational Biology Research Centre, Human Technopole, Viale Rita Levi-Montalcini 1, 20157, Milan, Italy.
- Department of Biology and Biotechnologies 'Charles Darwin', Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy.
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Lo Surdo P, Iannuccelli M, Contino S, Castagnoli L, Licata L, Cesareni G, Perfetto L. SIGNOR 3.0, the SIGnaling network open resource 3.0: 2022 update. Nucleic Acids Res 2022; 51:D631-D637. [PMID: 36243968 PMCID: PMC9825604 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkac883] [Citation(s) in RCA: 34] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2022] [Revised: 09/21/2022] [Accepted: 09/30/2022] [Indexed: 01/29/2023] Open
Abstract
The SIGnaling Network Open Resource (SIGNOR 3.0, https://signor.uniroma2.it) is a public repository that captures causal information and represents it according to an 'activity-flow' model. SIGNOR provides freely-accessible static maps of causal interactions that can be tailored, pruned and refined to build dynamic and predictive models. Each signaling relationship is annotated with an effect (up/down-regulation) and with the mechanism (e.g. binding, phosphorylation, transcriptional activation, etc.) causing the regulation of the target entity. Since its latest release, SIGNOR has undergone a significant upgrade including: (i) a new website that offers an improved user experience and novel advanced search and graph tools; (ii) a significant content growth adding up to a total of approx. 33,000 manually-annotated causal relationships between more than 8900 biological entities; (iii) an increase in the number of manually annotated pathways, currently including pathways deregulated by SARS-CoV-2 infection or involved in neurodevelopment synaptic transmission and metabolism, among others; (iv) additional features such as new model to represent metabolic reactions and a new confidence score assigned to each interaction.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Marta Iannuccelli
- Department of Biology, University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Rome 00133, Italy
| | - Silvia Contino
- Department of Biology, University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Rome 00133, Italy
| | - Luisa Castagnoli
- Department of Biology, University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Rome 00133, Italy
| | | | | | - Livia Perfetto
- To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +39 0672594315;
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