Project description:The offspring of older fathers have an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. It has been proposed that de novo point mutations and copy number variants (CNVs) in the continually dividing spermatogonia underlie this association. In light of the evidence implicating CNVs with schizophrenia and autism, here we use a mouse model to test the hypothesis that the offspring of older males have an increased risk of de novo CNVs. Three-month-old and fourteen- to sixteen-month-old C57BL/6J sires were mated with three-month-old dams to create control offspring and offspring of old sires, respectively. Applying genome-wide microarray screening technology, seven distinct CNVs were identified in a discovery set of twelve offspring and their parents. Competitive quantitative PCR was employed to confirm the variants and establish their frequency in a replication set of 77 offspring and their parents. Six de novo CNVs were detected in the offspring of older sires, while none were detected in the control group. One of the de novo CNVs involved Auts2 (autism susceptibility candidate 2), and other CNVs included genes linked to schizophrenia, autism and brain development. Two of the CNVs were associated with behavioural and/or neuroanatomical phenotypic features. This is the first experimental demonstration that the offspring of older males have more de novo CNVs. The results suggest that offspring of older fathers may be at increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism via the generation of de novo CNV in the male germline. In light of the trends for delayed parenthood in many societies, and in light of the potential for these CNVs to accumulate over subsequent generations, the impact of these mechanisms on the health of future generations warrants closer scrutiny. 2 sires of advanced paternal age (12-16 months of age) and 2 control (3 months of age) sires were mated to dams (3 months of age) to create 6 offspring of advanced paternal age (APA) and 6 control offspring (C), respectively, with an even number of sexes within each group of offspring. A commerical aCGH and a custom CNV array (both supplied by Agilent) were used in combination to detect copy number variations in the genomes of the offspring and their parents. DNA from all male animals was hybridized against a male reference animal and that from all female animals against a female reference animal.

Project description:Purpose: Chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) to assess copy number variation (CNV) content is now used as a first tier genetic diagnostic test for individuals with unexplained neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) or multiple congenital anomalies (MCA). Over 100 cytogenetic labs worldwide are using the Affymetrix CytoScan HD 2.7M array to genotype >15,000 clinical samples per month. The aim of this study is to develop a CNV resource from a population control cohort that can be used as a community resource for interpretation of clinical and research samples. Methods: We have genotyped a large population control set (1,000 individuals from our Ontario Population Genomics Platform (OPGP)) using the Affymetrix CytoScan HD microarray comprising 2.7 million probes. Four independent algorithms were applied to detect and assess high confidence CNVs. Reproducibility and validations were quantified using sample replicates and Quantitative-PCR (QPCR), respectively. Results: DNA from 873 individuals from the OPGP cohort passed quality control and we have identified 71,178 CNVs (81 CNVs/individual) distributed across 796 different cytogenetic regions in the genome; 9.8% of the CNVs were previously unreported. After applying three layers of filtering criteria, from our high confidence CNVs dataset, we obtained a >95% reproducibility and >90% validation rate. Due to the array's high probe density within genic regions, our high confidence CNV data set show 73% of the detected CNVs overlapped at least one gene. Conclusion: The genotype data and annotated CNVs presented in this study will represent a valuable public resource enabling clinical genetics research and diagnostics. For array quality control, CEL files were processed using modules from the Affymetrix power tools and genotypes were extracted from the CHP file. Samples passing the median of the absolute pairwise differences (MAPD) < 0.20 and waviness-sd < 0.11 were retained for further analysis. After multiple checks, we excluded 52 samples that do not meet quality control (QC) cutoffs. To confirm the sample's self-reported gender, we have matched the sex chromosome information from the array and identified six samples with gender mismatch, which were excluded from the analysis. We also excluded 47 samples due to excessive CNV calls. A final set of 895 samples were used for further analysis. This number included 22 sample replicates (indicated by _1 following the Sample title), which were used to determine reproducibility of the array calls. The CNV data for this study is available from dbVar (NCBI), DGVa (EBI) accession number estd212, and DGV.

Project description:Genomic structural variation is an important and abundant source of genetic and phenotypic variation. Here we describe the first systematic and genome-wide analysis of copy number variations (CNVs) in modern domesticated cattle using array comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH), quantitative PCR (qPCR) and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). The array CGH panel included 90 animals from 11 Bos taurus, 3 Bos indicus and 3 composite breeds for beef, dairy or dual purpose. We identified over 200 candidate CNV regions (CNVRs) in total and 177 within known chromosomes, which harbor or are adjacent to gains or losses. These 177 high-confidence CNVRs cover 28.1 mega bases or ~1.07% of the genome. Over 50% of the CNVRs (89/177) were found in multiple animals or breeds and analysis revealed breed-specific frequency differences and reflected aspects of the known ancestry of these cattle breeds. Selected CNVs were further validated by independent methods using qPCR and FISH. Approximately 67% of the CNVRs (119/177) completely or partially span cattle genes and 61% of the CNVRs (108/177) directly overlap with segmental duplications. The CNVRs span about 400 annotated cattle genes that are significantly enriched for specific biological functions such as immunity, lactation, reproduction and rumination. Multiple gene families, including ULBP, have gone through ruminant lineage-specific gene amplification. We detected and confirmed marked differences in their CNV frequencies across diverse breeds, indicating that some cattle CNVs are likely to arise independently in breeds and contribute to breed differences. Our results provide a valuable resource beyond microsatellites and single nucleotide polymorphisms to explore the full dimension of genetic variability for future cattle genomic research. The custom aCGH chips that interrogated the whole genome CNVs were build for 90 cattles from diverse breeds, with Hereford L1 Dominette 01449 as refference sample.

Dataset Information

Effect of Advanced Paternal Age on Copy Number Variation in Offspring

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets