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Convergent coexpression of autism associated genes suggests some novel risk genes may not be detectable in large-scale genetic studies

ABSTRACT: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social interactions and communication. Protein function altering variants in many genes have been shown to contribute to ASD risk; however, understanding the biological convergence across so many genes has been difficult and genetic studies depending on presence of deleterious variation may be limited in implicating highly intolerant genes with shorter coding sequences. Here, we demonstrate that coexpression patterns from human post-mortem brain samples (N = 993) are significantly correlated with the transcriptional consequences of CRISPR perturbations (gene editing, interference and activation) in human neurons (N = 17). Across 71 ASD risk genes, there is significant tissue-specific transcriptional convergence that implicates synaptic pathways. Tissue specific convergence of risk genes is a generalizable phenomenon, shown additionally in schizophrenia (brain) and atrial fibrillation (heart). The degree of this convergence in ASD is significantly correlated with the level of association to ASD from sequencing studies (rho = -0.32, P = 3.03 ×10−65) as well as differential expression in post-mortem ASD brains (rho = -0.23, P = 2.39×10−43). After removing all genes statistically associated with ASD, the remaining positively convergent genes showed intolerance to functional mutations, had shorter coding lengths than the ASD genes and were enriched for genes with clinical reports of potential pathogenic contribution to ASD. These results indicate that leveraging convergent coexpression can identify potentially novel risk genes that are unlikely to be discovered by sequencing studies. Overall, this work provides a simple approach to functionally proxy CRISPR perturbation, demonstrates significant context-specific transcriptional convergence among known risk genes of multiple diseases, and proposes novel ASD risk gene candidates.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE222259 | GEO | 2023/01/10

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a common, highly heritable neurodevelopmental condition characterized by marked genetic heterogeneity. Thus, a fundamental question is whether autism represents an aetiologically heterogeneous disorder in which the myriad genetic or environmental risk factors perturb common underlying molecular pathways in the brain. Here, we demonstrate consistent differences in transcriptome organization between autistic and normal brain by gene co-expression network analysis. Remarkably, regional patterns of gene expression that typically distinguish frontal and temporal cortex are significantly attenuated in the ASD brain, suggesting abnormalities in cortical patterning. We further identify discrete modules of co-expressed genes associated with autism: a neuronal module enriched for known autism susceptibility genes, including the neuronal specific splicing factor A2BP1 (also known as FOX1), and a module enriched for immune genes and glial markers. Using high-throughput RNA sequencing we demonstrate dysregulated splicing of A2BP1-dependent alternative exons in the ASD brain. Moreover, using a published autism genome-wide association study (GWAS) data set, we show that the neuronal module is enriched for genetically associated variants, providing independent support for the causal involvement of these genes in autism. In contrast, the immune-glial module showed no enrichment for autism GWAS signals, indicating a non-genetic aetiology for this process. Collectively, our results provide strong evidence for convergent molecular abnormalities in ASD, and implicate transcriptional and splicing dysregulation as underlying mechanisms of neuronal dysfunction in this disorder. To identify potential A2BP1-dependent differential splicing events in ASD brain, we performed high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) on three autism samples with significant downregulation of A2BP1 (average fold change by quantitative RT-PCR = 5.9) and three control samples with average A2BP1 levels. The list of potential A2BP1-depending differential splicing events in ASD is given in the Supplementary file linked at the foot of this record.

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Convergent coexpression of autism associated genes suggests some novel risk genes may not be detectable in large-scale genetic studies

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