Chen Liang, Cai Wenxiang, Wang Weidi, Liu Zhe, Lin Guan Ning
School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China.
Life (Basel). 2021 May 31;11(6):514. doi: 10.3390/life11060514.
Chromosome 22q11.21 copy number variant (CNV) is a vital risk factor that can be a genetic predisposition to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). As 22q11.21 CNV affects multiple genes, causal disease genes and mechanisms affected are still poorly understood. Thus, we aimed to identify the most impactful 22q11.21 CNV genes and the potential impacted human brain regions, developmental stages, and signaling pathways. We constructed the spatiotemporal dynamic networks of 22q11.21 CNV genes using the brain developmental transcriptome and physical protein-protein interactions. The affected brain regions, developmental stages, driver genes, and pathways were subsequently investigated via integrated bioinformatics analysis. As a result, we first identified that 22q11.21 CNV genes affect cortical area mainly during late-fetal periods. Interestingly, we observed that connections between a driver gene and its interacting partners, MECP2 and CUL3, also network hubs, only existed in the network of late-fetal period within cortical region, suggesting their functional specificity during brain development. We also confirmed the physical interaction result between DGCR8 and CUL3 by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. As a whole, our results could suggest that the disruption of DGCR8-dependent microRNA biogenesis plays a vital role in NDD for late-fetal cortical development.
22号染色体q11.21拷贝数变异(CNV)是一个重要的风险因素,可能是神经发育障碍(NDD)的遗传易感性因素。由于22q11.21 CNV影响多个基因,其致病基因和受影响的机制仍知之甚少。因此,我们旨在确定最具影响力的22q11.21 CNV基因以及潜在受影响的人类脑区、发育阶段和信号通路。我们利用脑发育转录组和物理蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用构建了22q11.21 CNV基因的时空动态网络。随后通过综合生物信息学分析研究受影响的脑区、发育阶段、驱动基因和信号通路。结果,我们首先确定22q11.21 CNV基因主要在胎儿后期影响皮质区域。有趣的是,我们观察到一个驱动基因与其相互作用伙伴MECP2和CUL3(也是网络枢纽)之间的连接仅存在于皮质区域胎儿后期的网络中,表明它们在脑发育过程中的功能特异性。我们还通过液相色谱-串联质谱法证实了DGCR8和CUL3之间的物理相互作用结果。总体而言,我们的结果表明,依赖DGCR8的微小RNA生物合成的破坏在胎儿后期皮质发育的NDD中起着至关重要的作用。