Papers of the week – GABRA1 and STXBP1 in Dravet, gene therapy & synonymous mutations in cancers

FASTA, FASTQ, SAM, BAM, BWA, GC, GATK, IGV. Phew. Day 2 at the EuroEPINOMICS bioinformatics workshop in Leuven. Usually my work starts after the initial NGS raw data quality control and mapping procedures. Today’s topics are supposed to improve my understanding of sequencing analysis and NGS data interpretation. While we are still struggling, other scientists have done their home work already. Here are some of the remarkable publications from this week.

Leuven

Biologists, physicians and computer scientist at the EuroEPINOMICS bioinformatics workshop 2014 in Leuven

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Papers of the week – 15q11 duplications, Olig1 & Automated decision-making

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A productive week in epilepsy genetics.  Scientists and editors were certainly busy this week reporting novel variants and deletions as well the experimental and statistical advances for their interpretation.

A de novo GRIN2A missensmutation in early-onset epileptic encephalopathy. We and others have associated variants affecting the GRIN2A gene with a range of childhood focal epilepsy syndromes. Continue reading

Papers of the week – WES Meta analysis, Dravet mice & large sequencing studies

Bild1Time flies – already thursday night again.  Here are updates on study designs to identify rare pathogenic mutations in neurodevelopment diseases, an epilepsy animal model study as well as novel statistical frameworks for large genetic screens.

The placebo effect. In a recent paper in Science Translational Medicine the group of Kam-Hansen investigated the effect of altered placebo and drug labeling changes and its outcome in patients with episodic migraine. Their results suggest that the placebo accounted for more than 50% of the drug effect.

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Mining GWAS mountains for missing heritability

What is missing? The catchy term “missing heritability” refers to a long-standing issue in human genetics that is particularly relevant to common diseases that are thought to have complex genetic architecture. Even though we know several thousands of risk factors for common diseases, the sum of all these risk factors only explains a small proportion of the genetic risk for disease. Where is all the remaining genetic disease risk hidden? A recent publication in PLOS Genetics suggests that known association peaks in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) may harbor more than one risk variant, turning GWAS peaks into mountain ranges. Also, this publication provides an interesting state-of-the art review on the role of common and rare variants with respect to missing heritability. Let’s turn back the clock and start with the decade-old debate on common versus rare variant models of human disease. Continue reading

The genetics of treatment response in newly diagnosed epilepsy

Two questions. There are two main questions that we would like to answer with genetics in the field of epilepsy. First, are there genetic risk factors for epilepsies and if so, what are they? Secondly, are there genetic factors that help us understand how patients react to treatment, i.e. are there genes that predispose to response to antiepileptic drugs or that might be associated with side effects? While we have made much progress in answering the first question by identifying many epilepsy genes, there have been few answers for the second question, the field of pharmacogenomics. Now, a recent study in Human Molecular Genetics looks at potential genetic risk factors for the response to antiepileptic drugs in newly treated epilepsy. This is a study that needed to be performed and that we were waiting for. Continue reading

16p13.11 microdeletions and the male bias

The enigmatic deletion. Amongst the various microdeletions implicated in human epilepsy, the 16q13.11 microdeletion is one of the structural variations that poses significant difficulties in understanding its associated risk and phenotypes. Now a recent paper in PLOS One investigates a large cohort of patients with various neurodevelopmental disorders for microdeletions in the 16p13.11 region. And particularly the finding regarding the sex distribution of symptomatic deletion carriers is remarkable.   Continue reading

NRXN1 deletions and the double hit hypothesis of idiopathic epilepsy

Old friends. Structural genomic variants or Copy Number Variations (CNVs) play an important role in many neurodevelopmental disorders including epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia and intellectual disability. Many of the CNVs representing genetic risk factors overlap between these diseases. Now, a recent study in Epilepsia reports on the exon-disrupting deletions in NRXN1 as genetic risk factors for Idiopathic Generalised Epilepsy. NRNX1 deletions were previously reported in several other neurodevelopmental disorders. However, there is an interesting and unanticipated twist to the story. Continue reading

The Hippocampus Conspiracy

Slightly misleading. The green and blue histological staining that has become the EuroEPINOMICS logo features a human hippocampus, a part of the human brain that is particularly important in human epilepsy. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) is the most common epilepsy in adults and involves the hippocampal region. Ironically, TLE is the human epilepsy that has always been at odds with genetic research. Let’s review what we know about the genetics of TLE and “hippocampal genetics”. Continue reading

Standing on the shoulders of giants: the EPICURE GWAS on Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy

Pushing the reset button. The history of epilepsy genetics can broadly be distinguished into two major eras: the time before September 4th, 2012 and everything after this. September 4th, 2012 was the date that the first large genome-wide association study in IGE/GGE was published online in Human Molecular Genetics. Each of the >100 association studies in IGE listed in PubMed is now dated and needs to measure up against the current study, which will likely be remembered as the “EPICURE study”. The results of the EPICURE study are surprising and upset our conventional wisdom of what causes one of the most common forms of epilepsy. Continue reading