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Hall LS, Medway CW, Pain O, Pardiñas AF, Rees EG, Escott-Price V, Pocklington A, Bray NJ, Holmans PA, Walters JTR, Owen MJ, O'Donovan MC. A transcriptome-wide association study implicates specific pre- and post-synaptic abnormalities in schizophrenia. Hum Mol Genet 2020; 29:159-167. [PMID: 31691811 PMCID: PMC7416679 DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddz253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2019] [Revised: 08/31/2019] [Accepted: 09/02/2019] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Schizophrenia is a complex highly heritable disorder. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified multiple loci that influence the risk of developing schizophrenia, although the causal variants driving these associations and their impacts on specific genes are largely unknown. We identify a significant correlation between schizophrenia risk and expression at 89 genes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (P ≤ 9.43 × 10-6), including 20 novel genes. Genes whose expression correlate with schizophrenia were enriched for those involved in abnormal CNS synaptic transmission (PFDR = 0.02) and antigen processing and presentation of peptide antigen via MHC class I (PFDR = 0.02). Within the CNS synaptic transmission set, we identify individual significant candidate genes to which we assign direction of expression changes in schizophrenia. The findings provide strong candidates for experimentally probing the molecular basis of synaptic pathology in schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lynsey S Hall
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Christopher W Medway
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Oliver Pain
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK.,Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, UK
| | - Antonio F Pardiñas
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Elliott G Rees
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Valentina Escott-Price
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Andrew Pocklington
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Nicholas J Bray
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Peter A Holmans
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - James T R Walters
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Michael J Owen
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
| | - Michael C O'Donovan
- MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, UK
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Medway CW, Abdul-Hay S, Mims T, Ma L, Bisceglio G, Zou F, Pankratz S, Sando SB, Aasly JO, Barcikowska M, Siuda J, Wszolek ZK, Ross OA, Carrasquillo M, Dickson DW, Graff-Radford N, Petersen RC, Ertekin-Taner N, Morgan K, Bu G, Younkin SG. ApoE variant p.V236E is associated with markedly reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease. Mol Neurodegener 2014; 9:11. [PMID: 24607147 PMCID: PMC3995879 DOI: 10.1186/1750-1326-9-11] [Citation(s) in RCA: 48] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2014] [Accepted: 03/03/2014] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which show significant association at the well-known APOE locus and at nineteen additional loci. Among the functional, disease-associated variants at these loci, missense variants are particularly important because they can be readily investigated in model systems to search for novel therapeutic targets. It is now possible to perform a low-cost search for these “actionable” variants by genotyping the missense variants at known LOAD loci already cataloged on the Exome Variant Server (EVS). In this proof-of-principle study designed to explore the efficacy of this approach, we analyzed three rare EVS variants in APOE, p.L28P, p.R145C and p.V236E, in our case control series of 9114 subjects. p.R145C proved to be too rare to analyze effectively. The minor allele of p.L28P, which was in complete linkage disequilibrium (D’ = 1) with the far more common APOE ϵ4 allele, showed no association with LOAD (P = 0.75) independent of the APOE ϵ4 allele. p.V236E was significantly associated with a marked reduction in risk of LOAD (P = 7.5×10−05; OR = 0.10, 0.03 to 0.45). The minor allele of p.V236E, which was in complete linkage disequilibrium (D’ = 1) with the common APOE ϵ3 allele, identifies a novel LOAD-associated haplotype (APOE ϵ3b) which is associated with decreased risk of LOAD independent of the more abundant APOE ϵ2, ϵ3 and ϵ4 haplotypes. Follow-up studies will be important to confirm the significance of this association and to better define its odds ratio. The ApoE p.V236E substitution is the first disease-associated change located in the lipid-binding, C-terminal domain of the protein. Thus our study (i) identifies a novel APOE missense variant which may profitably be studied to better understand how ApoE function may be modified to reduce risk of LOAD and (ii) indicates that analysis of protein-altering variants cataloged on the EVS can be a cost-effective way to identify actionable functional variants at recently discovered LOAD loci.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Guojun Bu
- Department of Neuroscience, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Jacksonville, FL 32224, USA.
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