The Human Knockout Project: identifying loss of function variants in large population datasets

Every human carries at least a hundred loss-of-function (LoF) variants predicted to severely disrupt the function of protein-coding genes, including many in the homozygous state. These variants represent ?experiments of nature? that can cast light on the function of currently uncharacterized human genes: indeed, much novel biology has already been learned from the involvement of rare LoF variants in severe Mendelian disease. Additionally, these variants have also proved valuable in identifying potential therapeutic targets: LoF variants in PCSK9have been causally linked to low LDL cholesterol levels, leading to the development of PCSK9 as a therapeutic target for cardiovascular disease.<br>However, discovering LoFs in the human population remains a significant challenge, as these variants are enriched for sequencing and annotation errors, and typically have very low frequency, confounding their discovery and interpretation. For this reason, large sample sizes are required to discover LoFs in every possible gene. Alternatively, two distinct strategies, the use of bottlenecked populations and populations with a high rate of consanguineous mating, are established to significantly enrich for discovery of homozygous rare LoF variants, effectively identifying ?knockout? humans.<br>To this end, we have developed an open-source tool, LOFTEE (Loss Of Function Transcript Effect Estimator), to annotate loss-of-function variants. In order to characterize the landscape of homozygous LoF variants (knockouts) across humans, we have applied LOFTEE to a number of large datasets from collaborative efforts, including over 91,000 exomes aggregated from a variety of rare and complex disease consortia, deeply phenotyped samples from Finnish national biobanks, and over 1,000 parentally-related individuals from the UK. We validate these methods using databases of known disease variants, and investigate the role of LoF variants on splicing by intersecting exomes with matched RNA-Seq data from over 500 individuals from the GTEx consortium. Finally, we describe the aggregation of these variants into a database of LoF variants, dbLoF, providing a resource for pharmaceutical development, transplant biology, and understanding of rare Mendelian diseases

Additional file 1: Table S1. of Concept and design of a genome-wide association genotyping array tailored for transplantation-specific studies

Tagging and coverage of MHC region markers. Table S2: Tagging and coverage of Tx-specific genes. Table S3: Untranslated regions (UTRs) considered in the TxArray design. Table S4: Loss-of-function variants included in the TxArray. Table S5: Copy number polymorphisms (CNPs) and variations (CNVs) included in the TxArray. (DOCX 54 kb