Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 May 4;3(6):100316.
doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100316. eCollection 2023 Jun 14.

Genome-wide structural variant analysis identifies risk loci for non-Alzheimer's dementias

Karri Kaivola  1 Ruth Chia  2 Jinhui Ding  3 Memoona Rasheed  2 Masashi Fujita  4 Vilas Menon  4 Ronald L Walton  5 Ryan L Collins  6   7   8 Kimberley Billingsley  9   10 Harrison Brand  6   7   8 Michael Talkowski  6   7   11 Xuefang Zhao  6   7 Ramita Dewan  2 Ali Stark  2 Anindita Ray  1 Sultana Solaiman  1 Pilar Alvarez Jerez  9   10 Laksh Malik  10 Ted M Dawson  12   13   14   15 Liana S Rosenthal  12 Marilyn S Albert  12 Olga Pletnikova  16   17 Juan C Troncoso  17 Mario Masellis  18   19   20   21 Julia Keith  22 Sandra E Black  19   23   24   20   21 Luigi Ferrucci  25 Susan M Resnick  26 Toshiko Tanaka  25 American Genome CenterInternational LBD Genomics ConsortiumInternational ALS/FTD ConsortiumPROSPECT ConsortiumEric Topol  27 Ali Torkamani  27 Pentti Tienari  28   29 Tatiana M Foroud  30 Bernardino Ghetti  31 John E Landers  32 Mina Ryten  33   34   35 Huw R Morris  36   37 John A Hardy  36   37   38   39 Letizia Mazzini  40 Sandra D'Alfonso  41 Cristina Moglia  42   43 Andrea Calvo  42   43 Geidy E Serrano  44 Thomas G Beach  44 Tanis Ferman  45 Neill R Graff-Radford  46 Bradley F Boeve  47 Zbigniew K Wszolek  48 Dennis W Dickson  5 Adriano Chiò  42   43   48 David A Bennett  49 Philip L De Jager  4 Owen A Ross  5 Clifton L Dalgard  50   51 J Raphael Gibbs  3 Bryan J Traynor  2   12   52 Sonja W Scholz  1   12
Collaborators, Affiliations

Genome-wide structural variant analysis identifies risk loci for non-Alzheimer's dementias

Karri Kaivola et al. Cell Genom. .

Abstract

We characterized the role of structural variants, a largely unexplored type of genetic variation, in two non-Alzheimer's dementias, namely Lewy body dementia (LBD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD)/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). To do this, we applied an advanced structural variant calling pipeline (GATK-SV) to short-read whole-genome sequence data from 5,213 European-ancestry cases and 4,132 controls. We discovered, replicated, and validated a deletion in TPCN1 as a novel risk locus for LBD and detected the known structural variants at the C9orf72 and MAPT loci as associated with FTD/ALS. We also identified rare pathogenic structural variants in both LBD and FTD/ALS. Finally, we assembled a catalog of structural variants that can be mined for new insights into the pathogenesis of these understudied forms of dementia.

Keywords: Lewy body dementia; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; case-control study; frontotemporal dementia; genome-wide association study; non–Alzheimer's dementia; resource; structural variant.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

S.W.S. serves on the Scientific Advisory Council of the Lewy Body Dementia Association and the Multiple System Atrophy Coalition. S.W.S. and B.J.T. receive research support from Cerevel Therapeutics. B.J.T. holds patents on the clinical testing and therapeutic implications of the C9orf72 repeat expansion. H.R.M. is employed by the University College London. In the last 12 months, he reports paid consultancy from Roche and Amylyx; lecture fees/honoraria from BMJ, Kyowa Kirin, and Movement Disorders Society; and research grants from Parkinson’s UK, Cure Parkinson’s Trust, PSP Association, Medical Research Council, and the Michael J Fox Foundation. H.R.M. is a co-applicant on a patent application related to C9orf72 “method for diagnosing a neurodegenerative disease” (PCT/GB2012/052140).

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Study flowchart Schematic illustration of the analytical workflow. The same controls were used in the analysis of LBD and FTD/ALS.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Descriptive statistics of the structural variants in the study cohorts Descriptive statistics of high-quality subset of structural variants mapped by the GATK-SV pipeline in the (A) LBD case-control cohort and (B) FTD/ALS case-control cohort. AF, allele frequency; DEL, deletions; DUP, duplications; INS, insertions; INV, inversions; CPX, complex variant; OTH, other variant; SV, structural variant.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Genome-wide representation of the common structural variants in the FTD/ALS case-control cohort Manhattan plot depicting the GWAS results (n = 2,307 FTD and 3,677 controls, and 4,699 structural variants with MAF ≥ 1%). The annotations show the break-end variant on chromosome 9, corresponding to the C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion, and a 673-kb complex inversion that is part of the MAPT H2 haplotype.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Genome-wide representation of the common structural variants in LBD For a Figure360 author presentation of this figure, see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100316. (A) Manhattan plot depicting the GWAS results (n = 2,355 LBD cases and 3,700 controls; 4,889 structural variants with MAF > 1%). (B) An illustration of the TPCN1 deletion in a heterozygous carrier. Paired-end reads that did not span the deletion have been omitted for clarity. (C) The TPCN1 deletion (purple diamond) is the top association signal in the LBD analysis and shows strong linkage disequilibrium with nearby single-nucleotide variants.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Genomic fine-mapping of the TPCN1 locus (A) Scatterplot showing the beta regression coefficients of common variants (MAF ≥ 1%) at the TPCN1 locus in the Chia et al. LBD GWAS (y axis) and Bellenguez et al. Alzheimer’s disease GWAS (x axis). (B) Beta-beta plot comparing the TPCN1 locus variants in the Chia et al. LBD GWAS (y axis) with the Nalls et al. Parkinson’s disease GWAS results (excluding 23&Me data; x axis). (C) Single-nucleus RNA sequence analysis of the TPCN1 deletion-tagging SNP rs6489896 identified a significant cis-eQTL for RITA1 in excitatory neurons.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Interactive catalog of structural variants in non-Alzheimer’s dementias (A) Screen shot of the online portal that lets the user filter structural variants and display genomic regions. For example, this image shows a large duplication encompassing the entire SNCA gene in an LBD case. (B) Visualization of structural variants using BigBed files in the Ensembl genome browsers as custom tracks (https://www.ensembl.org).

References

    1. Ho S.S., Urban A.E., Mills R.E. Structural variation in the sequencing era. Nat. Rev. Genet. 2020;21:171–189. doi: 10.1038/s41576-019-0180-9. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wheeler D.A., Srinivasan M., Egholm M., Shen Y., Chen L., McGuire A., He W., Chen Y.J., Makhijani V., Roth G.T., et al. The complete genome of an individual by massively parallel DNA sequencing. Nature. 2008;452:872–876. doi: 10.1038/nature06884. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Blauwendraat C., Pletnikova O., Geiger J.T., Murphy N.A., Abramzon Y., Rudow G., Mamais A., Sabir M.S., Crain B., Ahmed S., et al. Genetic analysis of neurodegenerative diseases in a pathology cohort. Neurobiol. Aging. 2019;76 doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2018.11.007. 214.e1–214214.e9. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Guyant-Marechal I., Berger E., Laquerrière A., Rovelet-Lecrux A., Viennet G., Frebourg T., Rumbach L., Campion D., Hannequin D. Intrafamilial diversity of phenotype associated with app duplication. Neurology. 2008;71:1925–1926. doi: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000339400.64213.56. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Farrer M., Kachergus J., Forno L., Lincoln S., Wang D.S., Hulihan M., Maraganore D., Gwinn-Hardy K., Wszolek Z., Dickson D., Langston J.W. Comparison of kindreds with parkinsonism and alpha-synuclein genomic multiplications. Ann. Neurol. 2004;55:174–179. doi: 10.1002/ana.10846. - DOI - PubMed