Journal
HUMAN MOLECULAR GENETICS
Volume 22, Issue 7, Pages 1358-1372Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/hmg/dds546
Keywords
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Funding
- UK Medical Research Council [G0700073]
- Kid's Kidney Research
- Egyptian Government Scholarship
- European Community [241955 SYSCILIA]
- Wellcome Trust Knock-out Mouse Resource scheme [ME041596]
- Medical Research Council [G0700073] Funding Source: researchfish
- The Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust [09JTA] Funding Source: researchfish
- MRC [G0700073] Funding Source: UKRI
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The ciliopathies are a group of heterogeneous diseases with considerable variations in phenotype for allelic conditions such as MeckelGruber syndrome (MKS) and Joubert syndrome (JBTS) even at the inter-individual level within families. In humans, mutations in TMEM67 (also known as MKS3) cause both MKS and JBTS, with TMEM67 encoding the orphan receptor meckelin (TMEM67) that localizes to the ciliary transition zone. We now describe the Tmem67(tm1(Dgen/H)) knockout mouse model that recapitulates the brain phenotypic variability of these human ciliopathies, with categorization of Tmem67 mutant animals into two phenotypic groups. An MKS-like incipient congenic group (F6 to F10) manifested very variable neurological features (including exencephaly, and frontal/occipital encephalocele) that were associated with the loss of primary cilia, diminished Shh signalling and dorsalization of the caudal neural tube. The MKS-like group also had high de-regulated canonical Wnt/-catenin signalling associated with hyper-activated Dishevelled-1 (Dvl-1) localized to the basal body. Conversely, a second fully congenic group (F 10) had less variable features pathognomonic for JBTS (including cerebellar hypoplasia), and retention of abnormal bulbous cilia associated with mild neural tube ventralization. The JBTS-like group had de-regulated low levels of canonical Wnt signalling associated with the loss of Dvl-1 localization to the basal body. Our results suggest that modifier alleles partially determine the variation between MKS and JBTS, implicating the interaction between Dvl-1 and meckelin, or other components of the ciliary transition zone. The Tmem67(tm1(Dgen/H)) line is unique in modelling the variable expressivity of phenotypes in these two ciliopathies.
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