TY - JOUR
T1 - Whole exome sequencing in patients with Williams–Beuren syndrome followed by disease modeling in mice points to four novel pathways that may modify stenosis risk
AU - Parrish, Phoebe C.R.
AU - Liu, Delong
AU - Knutsen, Russell H.
AU - Billington, Charles J.
AU - Mecham, Robert P.
AU - Fu, Yi Ping
AU - Kozel, Beth A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS) is a narrowing of the aorta caused by elastin (ELN) haploinsufficiency. SVAS severity varies among patients with Williams–Beuren syndrome (WBS), a rare disorder that removes one copy of ELN and 25–27 other genes. Twenty percent of children with WBS require one or more invasive and often risky procedures to correct the defect while 30% have no appreciable stenosis, despite sharing the same basic genetic lesion. There is no known medical therapy. Consequently, identifying genes that modify SVAS offers the potential for novel modifier-based therapeutics. To improve statistical power in our rare-disease cohort (N= 104 exomes), we utilized extreme-phenotype cohorting, functional variant filtration and pathway-based analysis. Gene set enrichment analysis of exome-wide association data identified increased adaptive immune system variant burden among genes associated with SVAS severity. Additional enrichment, using only potentially pathogenic variants known to differ in frequency between the extreme phenotype subsets, identified significant association of SVAS severity with not only immune pathway genes, but also genes involved with the extracellular matrix, G protein-coupled receptor signaling and lipid metabolism using both SKAT-O and RQTest. Complementary studies in Eln+/−; Rag1−/− mice, which lack a functional adaptive immune system, showed improvement in cardiovascular features of ELN insufficiency. Similarly, studies in mixed background Eln+/− mice confirmed that variations in genes that increase elastic fiber deposition also had positive impact on aortic caliber. By using tools to improve statistical power in combination with orthogonal analyses in mice, we detected four main pathways that contribute to SVAS risk.
AB - Supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS) is a narrowing of the aorta caused by elastin (ELN) haploinsufficiency. SVAS severity varies among patients with Williams–Beuren syndrome (WBS), a rare disorder that removes one copy of ELN and 25–27 other genes. Twenty percent of children with WBS require one or more invasive and often risky procedures to correct the defect while 30% have no appreciable stenosis, despite sharing the same basic genetic lesion. There is no known medical therapy. Consequently, identifying genes that modify SVAS offers the potential for novel modifier-based therapeutics. To improve statistical power in our rare-disease cohort (N= 104 exomes), we utilized extreme-phenotype cohorting, functional variant filtration and pathway-based analysis. Gene set enrichment analysis of exome-wide association data identified increased adaptive immune system variant burden among genes associated with SVAS severity. Additional enrichment, using only potentially pathogenic variants known to differ in frequency between the extreme phenotype subsets, identified significant association of SVAS severity with not only immune pathway genes, but also genes involved with the extracellular matrix, G protein-coupled receptor signaling and lipid metabolism using both SKAT-O and RQTest. Complementary studies in Eln+/−; Rag1−/− mice, which lack a functional adaptive immune system, showed improvement in cardiovascular features of ELN insufficiency. Similarly, studies in mixed background Eln+/− mice confirmed that variations in genes that increase elastic fiber deposition also had positive impact on aortic caliber. By using tools to improve statistical power in combination with orthogonal analyses in mice, we detected four main pathways that contribute to SVAS risk.
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U2 - 10.1093/HMG/DDAA093
DO - 10.1093/HMG/DDAA093
M3 - Article
C2 - 32412588
AN - SCOPUS:85088851488
SN - 0964-6906
VL - 29
SP - 2035
EP - 2050
JO - Human molecular genetics
JF - Human molecular genetics
IS - 12
ER -