A genetic association study of glutamine-encoding DNA sequence structures, somatic CAG expansion, and DNA repair gene variants, with Huntington disease clinical outcomes

BACKGROUND: Huntington disease (HD) is caused by an unstable CAG/CAA repeat expansion encoding a toxic polyglutamine tract. Here, we tested the hypotheses that HD outcomes are impacted by somatic expansion of, and polymorphisms within, the HTT CAG/CAA glutamine-encoding repeat, and DNA repair genes. METHODS: The sequence of the glutamine-encoding repeat and the proportion of somatic CAG expansions in blood DNA from participants inheriting 40 to 50 CAG repeats within the TRACK-HD and Enroll-HD cohorts were determined using high-throughput ultra-deep-sequencing. Candidate gene polymorphisms were genotyped using kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP). Genotypic associations were assessed using time-to-event and regression analyses. FINDINGS: Using data from 203 TRACK-HD and 531 Enroll-HD participants, we show that individuals with higher blood DNA somatic CAG repeat expansion scores have worse HD outcomes: a one-unit increase in somatic expansion score was associated with a Cox hazard ratio for motor onset of 3·05 (95% CI = 1·94 to 4·80, p = 1·3 × 10-6). We also show that individual-specific somatic expansion scores are associated with variants in FAN1 (pFDR = 4·8 × 10-6), MLH3 (pFDR = 8·0 × 10-4), MLH1 (pFDR = 0·004) and MSH3 (pFDR = 0·009). We also show that HD outcomes are best predicted by the number of pure CAGs rather than total encoded-glutamines. INTERPRETATION: These data establish pure CAG length, rather than encoded-glutamine, as the key inherited determinant of downstream pathophysiology. These findings have implications for HD diagnostics, and support somatic expansion as a mechanistic link for genetic modifiers of clinical outcomes, a driver of disease, and potential therapeutic target in HD and related repeat expansion disorders. FUNDING: CHDI Foundation

A genetic association study of glutamine-encoding DNA sequence structures, somatic CAG expansion, and DNA repair gene variants, with Huntington disease clinical outcomes

Background: Huntington disease (HD) is caused by an unstable CAG/CAA repeat expansion encoding a toxic polyglutamine tract. Here, we tested the hypotheses that HD outcomes are impacted by somatic expansion of, and polymorphisms within, the HTT CAG/CAA glutamine-encoding repeat, and DNA repair genes. Methods: The sequence of the glutamine-encoding repeat and the proportion of somatic CAG expansions in blood DNA from participants inheriting 40 to 50 CAG repeats within the TRACK-HD and Enroll-HD cohorts were determined using high-throughput ultra-deep-sequencing. Candidate gene polymorphisms were genotyped using kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP). Genotypic associations were assessed using time-to-event and regression analyses. Findings: Using data from 203 TRACK-HD and 531 Enroll-HD participants, we show that individuals with higher blood DNA somatic CAG repeat expansion scores have worse HD outcomes: a one-unit increase in somatic expansion score was associated with a Cox hazard ratio for motor onset of 3·05 (95% CI = 1·94 to 4·80, p = 1·3 × 10−6). We also show that individual-specific somatic expansion scores are associated with variants in FAN1 (pFDR = 4·8 × 10-6), MLH3 (pFDR = 8·0 × 10−4), MLH1 (pFDR = 0·004) and MSH3 (pFDR = 0·009). We also show that HD outcomes are best predicted by the number of pure CAGs rather than total encoded-glutamines. Interpretation: These data establish pure CAG length, rather than encoded-glutamine, as the key inherited determinant of downstream pathophysiology. These findings have implications for HD diagnostics, and support somatic expansion as a mechanistic link for genetic modifiers of clinical outcomes, a driver of disease, and potential therapeutic target in HD and related repeat expansion disorders

Glutamine Codon Usage and Somatic Mosaicism of the HTT CAG Repeat Are Modifiers of Huntington Disease Severity

Background: Huntington disease (HD) is caused by the expansion of a polyglutamine encoding CAG repeat in exon 1 of the HTT gene. Affected individuals inherit ≥40 repeats and longer alleles are associated with earlier onset and higher HD severity. The HTT CAG repeat is genetically unstable in both the germline and soma. Somatic mosaicism is dependent on the number of CAG repeats and age, and is expansion biased and cell-type specific. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified components of the DNA repair system as trans¬-acting modifiers of HD severity, some of which are known to modify somatic instability of the HTT CAG repeat in HD mouse models. We thus hypothesise that the trans¬-acting modifiers identified by GWAS affect HD severity by their direct effect on HTT CAG somatic instability. Aims: Determine the exact trinucleotide structure of the HTT exon 1 repeat and quantify its somatic mosaicism to investigate their association with HD severity. Methods/techniques: Using genotyping-by-sequencing, we determined the exact genotype of the polyglutamine and polyproline encoding repeats in HTT exon 1 and quantified the somatic mosaicism associated with the CAG repeat in blood DNA from 807 HD expansion carriers. Results/outcome: The sequence encoding the HTT polyglutamine and polyproline tract has an atypical structure in ˜8% of the non-HD-causing alleles and ˜3% of the HD-causing alleles, differing from the typical structure by the number of glutamine encoding CAA codons and/or the number of proline encoding CCA and CCT codons. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the number of CAA codons is negatively correlated with HD severity and that the number of CAG repeats is a better predictor of HD severity (r2=0.559) than the number of glutamines (r2=0.537). Moreover, somatic mosaicism in blood correlates with HD severity (r2 ≥0.014, p≤2.5 × 10–3) and some of the polymorphisms associated with HD severity (p=1.5 × 10–5 for FAN1 rs3512, p=1.8 × 10–4 for MLH3 rs175080, p=3.6 × 10–3 for MLH1 rs1799977 and p=0.016 for MSH3 rs1382539). Conclusion: Our data show that atypical HD-causing alleles have major implications for genetic diagnosis and counselling and confirm the correlation of somatic expansion with HD severity. The latter further supports the therapeutic potential of targeting expansion causing components of the DNA repair system

Cryptic Polyglutamine Repeat Sequence Variation and Somatic Instability in Huntington’s Disease: Drivers of Pathology?

It is known that in addition to repeat length variation, the exact sequence of the polyglutamine repeat tract and the adjacent polyproline also vary. Likewise, it is known that the expanded CAG is somatically unstable in a process that is age-dependent, tissue-specific and expansion biassed. Notably, very large alleles exceeding greater than 1,000 repeats are observed in a subset of striatal neurons. These data strongly suggest that somatic instability contributes toward the tissue specificity and progressive nature of the symptoms. Indeed, it has been shown that the frequency of large expansions in cortical cells correlates with variation in age at onset not accounted for by inherited repeat length. Most recently, it has been demonstrated that mismatch repair genes lie under some of the association peaks for genome wide analysis of variants contributing to variation in age at onset. Thus, in order to further address these issues, we have developed a high-throughput sequencing pipeline that allows us to determine the precise sequence of the polyglutamine and polyproline tracts. These studies have revealed an unexpectedly high frequency of atypical non-pathogenic alleles. We have also detected novel CCG interruptions within the CAG array in a large ‘premutation’ length allele. The majority of expanded HD alleles retain the expected structure of CAG and CCG repeats, but a subset of atypical pathogenic alleles have been detected. Using this approach we can also estimate the degree of somatic mosaicism present in the blood DNA of each participant. These data confirm that as expected, somatic mosaicism in the blood DNA of HD individuals is age- and allele length-dependent. We are currently attempting to understand how atypical alleles and individual-specific mutational dynamics contribute toward phenotypic variability in HD. We are also investigating how variants in the mismatch repair genes contribute toward variation in somatic mosaicism