Nucleo-cytoplasmic transport of proteins and RNA in plants

Merkle T. Nucleo-cytoplasmic transport of proteins and RNA in plants. Plant Cell Reports. 2011;30(2):153-176.Transport of macromolecules between the nucleus and the cytoplasm is an essential necessity in eukaryotic cells, since the nuclear envelope separates transcription from translation. In the past few years, an increasing number of components of the plant nuclear transport machinery have been characterised. This progress, although far from being completed, confirmed that the general characteristics of nuclear transport are conserved between plants and other organisms. However, plant-specific components were also identified. Interestingly, several mutants in genes encoding components of the plant nuclear transport machinery were investigated, revealing differential sensitivity of plant-specific pathways to impaired nuclear transport. These findings attracted attention towards plant-specific cargoes that are transported over the nuclear envelope, unravelling connections between nuclear transport and components of signalling and developmental pathways. The current state of research in plants is summarised in comparison to yeast and vertebrate systems, and special emphasis is given to plant nuclear transport mutants

MST1R mutation as a genetic cause of Lady Windermere syndrome

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Exome Sequencing Identifies WDR35 Variants Involved in Sensenbrenner Syndrome

Sensenbrenner syndrome/cranioectodermal dysplasia (CED) is an autosomal-recessive disease that is characterized by craniosynostosis and ectodermal and skeletal abnormalities. We sequenced the exomes of two unrelated CED patients and identified compound heterozygous mutations in WDR35 as the cause of the disease in each of the two patients independently, showing that it is possible to find the causative gene by sequencing the exome of a single sporadic patient. With RT-PCR, we demonstrate that a splice-site mutation in exon 2 of WDR35 alters splicing of RNA on the affected allele, introducing a premature stop codon. WDR35 is homologous to TULP4 (from the Tubby superfamily) and has previously been characterized as an intraflagellar transport component, confirming that Sensenbrenner syndrome is a ciliary disorder

Human variation in population-wide gene expression data predicts gene perturbation phenotype.

Funder: German Research FoundationFunder: Dutch Research Council (NWO)Funder: BMBF BonnFunder: Europäische KommissionPopulation-scale datasets of healthy individuals capture genetic and environmental factors influencing gene expression. The expression variance of a gene of interest (GOI) can be exploited to set up a quasi loss- or gain-of-function "in population" experiment. We describe here an approach, huva (human variation), taking advantage of population-scale multi-layered data to infer gene function and relationships between phenotypes and expression. Within a reference dataset, huva derives two experimental groups with LOW or HIGH expression of the GOI, enabling the subsequent comparison of their transcriptional profile and functional parameters. We demonstrate that this approach robustly identifies the phenotypic relevance of a GOI allowing the stratification of genes according to biological functions, and we generalize this concept to almost 16,000 genes in the human transcriptome. Additionally, we describe how huva predicts monocytes to be the major cell type in the pathophysiology of STAT1 mutations, evidence validated in a clinical cohort

Impact of rare and common genetic variation in the interleukin-1 pathway on human cytokine responses

BACKGROUND: The interleukin (IL)-1 pathway is primarily associated with innate immunological defense and plays a major role in the induction and regulation of inflammation. Both common and rare genetic variation in this pathway underlies various inflammation-mediated diseases, but the role of rare variants relative to common variants in immune response variability in healthy individuals remains unclear. METHODS: We performed molecular inversion probe sequencing on 48 IL-1 pathway-related genes in 463 healthy individuals from the Human Functional Genomics Project. We functionally grouped common and rare variants, over gene, subpathway, and inflammatory levels and performed the Sequence Kernel Association Test to test for association with in vitro stimulation-induced cytokine responses; specifically, IL-1β and IL-6 cytokine measurements upon stimulations that represent an array of microbial infections: lipopolysaccharide (LPS), phytohaemagglutinin (PHA), Candida albicans (C. albicans), and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). RESULTS: We identified a burden of NCF4 rare variants with PHA-induced IL-6 cytokine and showed that the respective carriers are in the 1% lowest IL-6 producers. Collapsing rare variants in IL-1 subpathway genes produces a bidirectional association with LPS-induced IL-1β cytokine levels, which is reflected by a significant Spearman correlation. On the inflammatory level, we identified a burden of rare variants in genes encoding for proteins with an anti-inflammatory function with S. aureus-induced IL-6 cytokine. In contrast to these rare variant findings which were based on different types of stimuli, common variant associations were exclusively identified with C. albicans-induced cytokine over various levels of grouping, from the gene, to subpathway, to inflammatory level. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, this study shows that functionally grouping common and rare genetic variants enables the elucidation IL-1-mediated biological mechanisms, specifically, for IL-1β and IL-6 cytokine responses induced by various stimuli. The framework used in this study may allow for the analysis of rare and common genetic variants in a wider variety of (non-immune) complex phenotypes and therefore has the potential to contribute to better understanding of unresolved, complex traits and diseases