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. 2025 Feb 6;112(2):276-290.
doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2024.12.014. Epub 2025 Jan 13.

Genomic and phenotypic correlates of mosaic loss of chromosome Y in blood

Yasminka A Jakubek  1 Xiaolong Ma  2 Adrienne M Stilp  3 Fulong Yu  4 Jason Bacon  5 Justin W Wong  6 Francois Aguet  7 Kristin Ardlie  7 Donna K Arnett  8 Kathleen Barnes  9 Joshua C Bis  10 Tom Blackwell  11 Lewis C Becker  12 Eric Boerwinkle  13 Russell P Bowler  14 Matthew J Budoff  15 April P Carson  16 Jiawen Chen  17 Michael H Cho  18 Josef Coresh  19 Nancy J Cox  20 Paul S de Vries  13 Dawn L DeMeo  18 David W Fardo  21 Myriam Fornage  22 Xiuqing Guo  23 Michael E Hall  16 Nancy Heard-Costa  24 Bertha Hidalgo  25 Marguerite Ryan Irvin  25 Andrew D Johnson  26 Eric Jorgenson  27 Eimear E Kenny  28 Michael D Kessler  27 Daniel Levy  26 Yun Li  29 Joao A C Lima  12 Yongmei Liu  30 Adam E Locke  27 Ruth J F Loos  31 Mitchell J Machiela  32 Rasika A Mathias  33 Braxton D Mitchell  34 Joanne M Murabito  35 Josyf C Mychaleckyj  36 Kari E North  37 Peter Orchard  38 Stephen C J Parker  39 Yash Pershad  20 Patricia A Peyser  40 Katherine A Pratte  41 Bruce M Psaty  42 Laura M Raffield  43 Susan Redline  44 Regeneron Genetics CenterStephen S Rich  36 Jerome I Rotter  23 Sanjiv J Shah  45 Jennifer A Smith  46 Aaron P Smith  47 Albert Smith  11 Margaret A Taub  48 Hemant K Tiwari  49 Russell Tracy  50 Bjoernar Tuftin  43 NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine ConsortiumAlexander G Bick  20 Vijay G Sankaran  51 Alexander P Reiner  52 Paul Scheet  6 Paul L Auer  53
Affiliations

Genomic and phenotypic correlates of mosaic loss of chromosome Y in blood

Yasminka A Jakubek et al. Am J Hum Genet. .

Abstract

Mosaic loss of Y (mLOY) is the most common somatic chromosomal alteration detected in human blood. The presence of mLOY is associated with altered blood cell counts and increased risk of Alzheimer disease, solid tumors, and other age-related diseases. We sought to gain a better understanding of genetic drivers and associated phenotypes of mLOY through analyses of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of a large set of genetically diverse males from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. We show that haplotype-based calling methods can be used with WGS data to successfully identify mLOY events. This approach enabled us to identify differences in mLOY frequencies across populations defined by genetic similarity, revealing a higher frequency of mLOY in the European (EUR) ancestry group compared to other ancestries. We identify multiple loci associated with mLOY susceptibility and show that subsets of human hematopoietic stem cells are enriched for the activity of mLOY susceptibility variants. Finally, we found that certain alleles on chromosome Y are more likely to be lost than others in detectable mLOY clones.

Keywords: GWAS; mosaic loss of chromosome Y; multi-ancestry.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests L.M.R. and S.S.R. are consultants for the TOPMed Administrative Coordinating Center (through Westat). A.G.B. is on the scientific advisory board of TenSixteen Bio unrelated to the present work. P.L.A. serves on the board of Geno.Me, Inc. V.G.S. serves as an advisor and/or has equity in Branch Biosciences, Ensoma, and Cellarity, all unrelated to the present work. E.J., M.D.K., and A.E.L. are current employees and/or stockholders of Regeneron Genetics Center or Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
mLOY calling pipeline and distribution across age, ancestry, and clonal fraction (A) Overview of data processing for detection of mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY). (B) Fraction of samples (y axis) with mLOY by age (years) bins (x axis). (C) Histogram of the count of samples (y axis) and the estimated fraction of cells in the samples with mLOY (x axis). (D) mLOY odds ratio and 95% confidence interval (adjusted for covariates) for AA, HA, and EAS groups compared to the EUR group.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relative expression of CFHR1 and LRP6 Normalized expression of (A) CFHR1 and (B) LRP6 across primary human hematopoietic cell types. Counts per million (CPM) is the read count for each gene in each cell divided by the library size of each cell in millions.
Figure 3
Figure 3
SCAVENGE analysis of the mLOY trait using a hematopoietic scATAC-seq dataset (A) The uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) plot depicting cell type annotations of scATAC-seq dataset. (B) The UMAP of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) labeled as “enriched” or “depleted,” respectively, representing their relevance or non-relevance to mLOY risk by using the permutation tests coupled with SCAVENGE analysis (see material and methods for details). (C) Differential comparison of chromVAR TF motif enrichment between mLOY risk-variant-enriched and variant-depleted HSCs. Bonferroni-adjusted p value is indicated (y axis), and the TFs are ranked accordingly (x axis). The selected TF motifs with the top 10 ranks in each direction are labeled. (D and E) The chromVAR enrichment Z scores for CEBPA and GATA1 motifs are shown in UMAP plots (right) and violin plots (left) across HSCs as shown in (B). (A) presents the UMAP plot for cells of the entire hematopoiesis, including HSCs, progenitor cells, and various terminal cells. Since our focus is on the heterogeneity of LOY association in HSCs, we extracted all the HSCs from the dataset in (A) for the SCAVENGE analysis. The same x and y coordinates are used in (A) and (E). The spread of cell distribution shown in (B) and (E) results from displaying all the HSCs in one panel, which represents only a subset of the cells in (A).

Update of

  • Genomic and phenotypic correlates of mosaic loss of chromosome Y in blood.
    Jakubek YA, Ma X, Stilp AM, Yu F, Bacon J, Wong JW, Aguet F, Ardlie K, Arnett D, Barnes K, Bis JC, Blackwell T, Becker LC, Boerwinkle E, Bowler RP, Budoff MJ, Carson AP, Chen J, Cho MH, Coresh J, Cox N, de Vries PS, DeMeo DL, Fardo DW, Fornage M, Guo X, Hall ME, Heard-Costa N, Hidalgo B, Irvin MR, Johnson AD, Kenny EE, Levy D, Li Y, Lima JA, Liu Y, Loos RJF, Machiela MJ, Mathias RA, Mitchell BD, Murabito J, Mychaleckyj JC, North K, Orchard P, Parker SC, Pershad Y, Peyser PA, Pratte KA, Psaty BM, Raffield LM, Redline S, Rich SS, Rotter JI, Shah SJ, Smith JA, Smith AP, Smith A, Taub M, Tiwari HK, Tracy R, Tuftin B, Bick AG, Sankaran VG, Reiner AP, Scheet P, Auer PL. Jakubek YA, et al. medRxiv [Preprint]. 2024 Apr 19:2024.04.16.24305851. doi: 10.1101/2024.04.16.24305851. medRxiv. 2024. Update in: Am J Hum Genet. 2025 Feb 06;112(2):276-290. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2024.12.014. PMID: 38699360 Free PMC article. Updated. Preprint.

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