Birnbaum Ramon Y, Patwardhan Rupali P, Kim Mee J, Findlay Gregory M, Martin Beth, Zhao Jingjing, Bell Robert J A, Smith Robin P, Ku Angel A, Shendure Jay, Ahituv Nadav
Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Institute for Human Genetics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University at the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
PLoS Genet. 2014 Oct 23;10(10):e1004592. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004592. eCollection 2014 Oct.
In addition to their protein coding function, exons can also serve as transcriptional enhancers. Mutations in these exonic-enhancers (eExons) could alter both protein function and transcription. However, the functional consequence of eExon mutations is not well known. Here, using massively parallel reporter assays, we dissect the enhancer activity of three liver eExons (SORL1 exon 17, TRAF3IP2 exon 2, PPARG exon 6) at single nucleotide resolution in the mouse liver. We find that both synonymous and non-synonymous mutations have similar effects on enhancer activity and many of the deleterious mutation clusters overlap known liver-associated transcription factor binding sites. Carrying a similar massively parallel reporter assay in HeLa cells with these three eExons found differences in their mutation profiles compared to the liver, suggesting that enhancers could have distinct operating profiles in different tissues. Our results demonstrate that eExon mutations could lead to multiple phenotypes by disrupting both the protein sequence and enhancer activity and that enhancers can have distinct mutation profiles in different cell types.
除了其蛋白质编码功能外,外显子还可作为转录增强子。这些外显子增强子(eExons)中的突变可能会改变蛋白质功能和转录。然而,eExon突变的功能后果尚不清楚。在这里,我们使用大规模平行报告基因分析,在小鼠肝脏中以单核苷酸分辨率剖析了三个肝脏eExons(SORL1外显子17、TRAF3IP2外显子2、PPARG外显子6)的增强子活性。我们发现,同义突变和非同义突变对增强子活性具有相似的影响,并且许多有害突变簇与已知的肝脏相关转录因子结合位点重叠。在HeLa细胞中对这三个eExons进行类似的大规模平行报告基因分析,发现它们与肝脏相比,突变谱存在差异,这表明增强子在不同组织中可能具有不同的运作模式。我们的结果表明,eExon突变可能通过破坏蛋白质序列和增强子活性而导致多种表型,并且增强子在不同细胞类型中可能具有不同的突变谱。