Project description:Diabetes is a complex genetic disease affecting millions of people worldwide. A common monogenic form of diabetes is glucokinase (GCK) maturity-onset diabetes of the young (GCK-MODY), which is caused by heterozygous inactivating variants in the gene encoding GCK. GCK catalyzes the phosphorylation of glucose and is known as the pancreatic glucose sensor. Patients with GCK-MODY, in contrast to other diabetics, often do not require treatment but are frequently misdiagnosed and treated unnecessarily. Genetic testing can prevent this, but is hampered by the challenge of interpreting genetic variants. To address this challenge, we generated a comprehensive map of human GCK variant activity. The activity map includes 97% of the possible missense and nonsense variants and correlate with in vitro catalytic efficiency, fasting glucose levels in patients and evolutionary conservation analysis. Activity scores include both hyper- and hypoactive variants.
Project description:Amino acid substitutions can perturb protein activity in multiple ways. Understanding their mechanistic basis may pinpoint how residues contribute to protein function. Here, we characterize the mechanisms of human glucokinase (GCK) variants, building on our previous comprehensive study on GCK variant activity. We assayed the abundance of 95\% GCK missense and nonsense variants, and found that 59\% of hypoactive variants have a decreased cellular abundance. By combining our abundance scores with predictions of protein thermodynamic stability, we identify residues important for GCK metabolic stability and conformational dynamics. These residues could be targeted to modulate GCK activity, and thereby affect glucose homeostasis.
Project description:Vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKOR) drives the vitamin K cycle, activating vitamin K-dependent blood clotting factors. VKOR is also the target of the widely used anticoagulant drug, warfarin. Despite VKOR’s pivotal role in coagulation, its structure and active site remain poorly understood. Here, we used multiplexed, sequencing-based assays to measure the effects of 2,695 VKOR missense variants on abundance and 697 variants on activity in cultured human cells.
Project description:Multiplexed assays of variant effect are powerful methods to profile the consequences of rare variants on gene expression and organismal fitness. Yet, few studies have integrated several multiplexed assays to map variant effects on gene expression in coding sequences. Here, we pioneered a multiplexed assay based on polysome profiling to measure variant effects on translation at scale, uncovering single-nucleotide variants that increase and decrease ribosome load. By combining high-throughput ribosome load data with multiplexed mRNA and protein abundance readouts, we mapped the cis-regulatory landscape of thousands of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) variants from RNA to protein and found numerous coding variants that alter COMT expression. Finally, we trained machine learning models to map signatures of variant effects on COMT gene expression and uncovered both directional and divergent impacts across expression layers. Our analyses reveal expression phenotypes for thousands of variants in COMT and highlight variant effects on both single and multiple layers of expression. Our findings prompt future studies that integrate several multiplexed assays for the readout of gene expression
Project description:Delineating functionally normal variants from functionally abnormal variants in tumor suppressor proteins is critical for cancer surveillance, prognosis, and treatment options. BRCA1 is a protein that has many variants of uncertain significance which are not yet classified as functionally normal or abnormal. In vitro functional assays can be used to identify the functional impact of a variant when the variant has not yet been categorized through clinical observation. Here we employ a homology-directed repair (HDR) reporter assay to evaluate over 300 missense and nonsense BRCA1 variants between amino acid residues 1280 and 1576, which encompasses the coiled-coil and serine cluster domains. Functionally abnormal variants tended to cluster in residues known to interact with PALB2, which is critical for homology-directed repair. Multiplexed results were confirmed by singleton assay and by ClinVar database variant interpretations. Comparison of multiplexed results to designated benign or likely benign or pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants in the ClinVar database yielded 100% specificity and 100% sensitivity of the multiplexed assay. Clinicians can reference the results of this functional assay for help in guiding cancer treatment and surveillance options. These results are the first to evaluate this domain of BRCA1 using a multiplexed approach and indicate the importance of this domain in the DNA repair process.
Project description:To validate a high-throughput screening data in human cells using Multiplexed Assays for Variant Effects (MAVE), we performed a high-throughput deep mutational scanning of single nucleotide changes in exon 10 encoding p.G1000 to p.I1037 of the WD40 domain of PALB2 using a cell survival assay in haploid human HAP1 cells. We obtained MAVE scores for 276 single-nucleotide variants, leading to 9 nonsense and 68 synonymous changes, as well as 199 amino acid substitutions. Both variant groups showed an asymmetric distribution that is skewed towards low MAVE scores of nonsense and damaging variants, respectively. These MAVE data included scores for 218 unique single-nucleotide variants, leading to 9 nonsense changes and 209 amino acid substitutions. We observed a good and significant correlation between the outcomes from the MAVE and high-throughput screens (n=179, r=-0,6439, p<0.0001), indicating concordance between the outcomes of high-throughput analysis of PALB2 variants in human and mouse cells.