Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS
Volume 89, Issue 4, Pages 551-563Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.09.011
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Developmental Genome Anatomy Project [GM061354, HD065286]
- National 973 project on Population and Health of China [2010CB529601]
- Science and Technology Council of Shanghai [09JC1402400, 09ZR1404500]
- Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative
- National Institutes of Health [F32MH087123]
- 5 per mille program
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Persons with neurodevelopmental disorders or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often harbor chromosomal microdeletions, yet the individual genetic contributors within these regions have not been systematically evaluated. We established a consortium of clinical diagnostic and research laboratories to accumulate a large cohort with genetic alterations of chromosomal region 2q23.1 and acquired 65 subjects with microdeletion or translocation. We sequenced translocation breakpoints; aligned microdeletions to determine the critical region; assessed effects on mRNA expression; and examined medical records, photos, and clinical evaluations. We identified a single gene, methyl-CpG-binding domain 5 (MBD5), as the only locus that defined the critical region. Partial or complete deletion of MBD5 was associated with haploinsufficiency of mRNA expression, intellectual disability, epilepsy, and autistic features. Fourteen alterations, including partial deletions of noncoding regions not typically captured or considered pathogenic by current diagnostic screening, disrupted MBD5 alone. Expression profiles and clinical characteristics were largely indistinguishable between MBD5-specific alteration and deletion of the entire 2q23.1 interval. No copy-number alterations of MBD5 were observed in 7878 controls, suggesting MBD5 alterations are highly penetrant. We surveyed MOOS coding variations among 747 ASD subjects compared to 2043 non-ASD subjects analyzed by whole-exome sequencing and detected an association with a highly conserved methyl-CpG-binding domain missense variant, p.79Gly>Glu (c.236G>A) (p = 0.012). These results suggest that genetic alterations of MBD5 cause features of 2q23.1 microdeletion syndrome and that this epigenetic regulator significantly contributes to ASD risk, warranting further consideration in research and clinical diagnostic screening and highlighting the importance of chromatin remodeling in the etiology of these complex disorders.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available