Chui Martin Man-Chun, Kwong Anna Ka-Yee, Leung Hiu Yu Cherie, Pang Chingyiu, Scheller Ines F, Wong Sheila Suet-Na, Fung Cheuk-Wing, Yépez Vicente A, Gagneur Julien, Mak Christopher Chun-Yu, Chung Brian Hon-Yin
Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
NPJ Genom Med. 2025 May 3;10(1):36. doi: 10.1038/s41525-025-00493-5.
Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) often have unknown genetic causes. Current efforts in identifying disease-related genetic variants using exome or genome sequencing still lead to an excessive number of variants of uncertain significance (VUS). There is an increasing interest in transcriptomics and, more recently, proteomics for variant detection and interpretation. In this study, we integrated quantitative liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry proteomics, RNA sequencing, and exome reanalysis to resolve VUS and detect novel causal variants in 34 patients with undiagnosed NDDs, using the software PROTRIDER and DROP to detect protein outliers and RNA outliers, respectively. We obtained a diagnosis in 11 cases (32%) resulting from the increased amount of information provided by the two additional levels of omics (n = 5) and the updated literature evidence (n = 6). Our experience suggests the potential of this outlier-detection multi-omics workflow for improving diagnostic yield in NDDs and other rare disorders.
神经发育障碍(NDDs)往往具有未知的遗传病因。目前使用外显子组或基因组测序来识别与疾病相关的基因变异的努力,仍然会产生大量意义不确定的变异(VUS)。转录组学,以及最近的蛋白质组学,在变异检测和解释方面越来越受到关注。在本研究中,我们整合了定量液相色谱 - 质谱蛋白质组学、RNA测序和外显子组重新分析,以解决34例未确诊的NDD患者中的VUS并检测新的致病变异,分别使用软件PROTRIDER和DROP来检测蛋白质异常值和RNA异常值。由于另外两个组学水平提供的信息量增加(n = 5)以及更新的文献证据(n = 6),我们在11例(32%)患者中得出了诊断结果。我们的经验表明,这种异常值检测多组学工作流程在提高NDDs和其他罕见疾病的诊断率方面具有潜力。