Phenomic determinants of genomic variation in autism spectrum disorders.

BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are common, heritable neurobiologic conditions of unknown aetiology confounded by significant clinical and genetic heterogeneity. METHODS: This study evaluated a broad categorisation of phenotypic traits (or phenome) for 100 subjects with Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised/Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Generic (ADI-R/ADOS-G) confirmed idiopathic ASD undergoing 1 Mb bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) array comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Array CGH uncovered nine different pathogenic copy number variants (pCNVs) in 9/100 ASD subjects having complex phenotypes (ASD+/- intellectual disability (ID; IQ<70)) and/or physical anomalies), normal karyotype, fragile X analysis, and comprehensive evaluation by a clinical geneticist. Unique pCNVs in our cohort included del(5)(p15.2p15.31) (2.4 Mb), del(3)(p24.3) (0.1 Mb) and dup(18)(p11.3)(0.9 Mb). Five pCNVs were recurrent in our cohort or were previously described in subjects with ASD+/-ID: (dup(7)(q11.23)(1.5 Mb); del(2)(p15p16.1) (6.1 Mb and 7.9 Mb); del(14)(q11.2) (0.7 Mb) and dup(15)(q11q13) (10 Mb), including del(X)(p11.22) (470 Kb) in two autistic brothers. Male: female distribution in subjects with pCNVs was reduced to 1.25:1 from 3.2:1 in the original cohort. The authors stratified the study population according to a broad spectrum of clinical features and correlated specific phenotypes with respect to CNV load and pathogenicity. The findings indicate increased prevalence of pCNVs in subjects with microcephaly (<2nd centile; n = 2 of 4 ASD subjects with microcephaly; p = 0.04), and ID (n = 9 of 64 subjects with ASD and ID; p = 0.02). Interestingly, in the absence of ID co-morbidity with an ASD, no pCNVs were found. The relationship between parental ages at delivery and CNV load and pathogenicity was also explored.

Putatively benign copy number variants in subjects with idiopathic autism spectrum disorder and/or intellectual disability.

Putatively benign copy number variants (bCNVs) can be broadly defined as DNA copy number gains or losses that do not lead to a recognizable clinical phenotype. Detection of bCNVs in genomes of clinically healthy individuals is increasing with the widespread use of whole genome arrays of different resolutions and the use of sequence comparison methods. However, the role of bCNVs in human disease susceptibility and phenotype diversity is mostly unknown. In order to explore a potential role of bCNVs in the susceptibility to and/or pathogenesis of human neurodevelopmental disorders we examined the frequency and type of common bCNVs (detected in >/=2 independent control studies) amongst 221 subjects with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or intellectual disability (ID) in comparison to 40 controls using three array platforms of increasing resolution (Spectral Genomics (1 Mb), Agilent (0.03 Mb) and NimbleGen (0.01 Mb)). We determined that the number of bCNVs/subject, type and frequency of most common bCNVs were similar for both the test and control cohorts when the same array platform was used. The comparison of the 'load' of bCNVs (i.e. number/subject) to a standardized metric of phenotypic features (see de Vries et al., 2001) in 91 ASD subjects revealed that a phenotype score >/=4 is significantly more common (P < 0.05) in persons with an ASD having one or more bCNVs via 1 Mb array-CGH, whereas individuals without any recognizable bCNVs are significantly more likely to have a less complex phenotype and a score

Complexity in the host response to Salmonella Typhimurium infection in AcB and BcA recombinant congenic strains.

The host response to Salmonella infection is controlled by its genetic makeup. Using the mouse model of typhoid fever, several genes were found to influence the outcome of Salmonella infection, including Nramp1 (Slc11a1). In order to improve our knowledge of genetic determinants of the mouse response to acute Salmonella Typhimurium infection, we performed a systematic screening of a set of A/J and C57BL/6J recombinant congenic strains (RCS) for their resistance to infection. While we knew that the parental strains differ in their susceptibility to Salmonella because C57BL/6J mice carry a non-functional allele at Nramp1, we hypothesized that other genes would influence the response to Salmonella and segregate in the RCS. We identified several RCS that showed a non-expected phenotype given their known Nramp1 genotype proving that the response to Salmonella in A/J and C57BL/6J mice is complex. Based on these findings, we selected two RCS for generation of fully informative F2 crosses, (AcB61 x 129S6) and (AcB64 x DBA/2J). Genetic analyses performed on these crosses identified five novel Salmonella susceptibility QTL mapping to chromosomes 3 (Ity4), 2 (Ity5), 14 (Ity6), 7 (Ity7) and 15 (Ity8). These results illustrate the genetic complexity associated with the mouse response to Salmonella Typhimurium.