Stochastic modelling, Bayesian inference, and new in vivomeasurements elucidate the debated mtDNA bottleneck mechanism
- Imperial College London, United Kingdom
- IFA Tulln, Austria
- University of Veterinary Medicine, Austria
- University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Abstract
Dangerous damage to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can be ameliorated during mammalian development through a highly debated mechanism called the mtDNA bottleneck. Uncertaintysurrounding this process limits our ability to address inherited mtDNA diseases. We produce a new, physically motivated, generalisable theoretical model for mtDNA populations during development, allowing the first statistical comparison of proposed bottleneck mechanisms. Using approximate Bayesian computation and mouse data, we find most statistical support for a combination of binomial partitioning of mtDNAs at cell divisions and random mtDNAturnover, meaning that the debated exact magnitude of mtDNAcopy number depletion is flexible. New experimental measurements from a wild-derived mtDNA pairing in mice confirm the theoretical predictions of this model. Weanalytically solve a mathematical description of thismechanism, computing probabilities of mtDNA disease onset,efficacy of clinical sampling strategies, and effects of potential dynamic interventions, thus developing aquantitative and experimentally-supported stochastic theoryof the bottleneck.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Jodi Nunnari, University of California, Davis, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: The study was discussed and approved by the institutional ethics committee in accordance with Good Scientific Practice (GSP) guidelines and national legislation. FELASA recommendations for the health monitoring of SPF mice were followed. Approved by the institutional ethics committee and the national authority according to Section 26 of the Law for Animal Experiments, Tierversuchsgesetz 2012 - TVG 2012.
Version history
- Received: March 13, 2015
- Accepted: May 29, 2015
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 2, 2015 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: June 4, 2015 (version 2)
- Version of Record published: July 1, 2015 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2015, Johnston et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Stochastic modelling, Bayesian inference, and new in vivomeasurements elucidate the debated mtDNA bottleneck mechanism
eLife 4:e07464.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07464
Further reading
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- Computational and Systems Biology
- Medicine
Background:
Preterm birth is the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Most cases of preterm birth occur spontaneously and result from preterm labor with intact (spontaneous preterm labor [sPTL]) or ruptured (preterm prelabor rupture of membranes [PPROM]) membranes. The prediction of spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB) remains underpowered due to its syndromic nature and the dearth of independent analyses of the vaginal host immune response. Thus, we conducted the largest longitudinal investigation targeting vaginal immune mediators, referred to herein as the immunoproteome, in a population at high risk for sPTB.
Methods:
Vaginal swabs were collected across gestation from pregnant women who ultimately underwent term birth, sPTL, or PPROM. Cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, and antimicrobial peptides in the samples were quantified via specific and sensitive immunoassays. Predictive models were constructed from immune mediator concentrations.
Results:
Throughout uncomplicated gestation, the vaginal immunoproteome harbors a cytokine network with a homeostatic profile. Yet, the vaginal immunoproteome is skewed toward a pro-inflammatory state in pregnant women who ultimately experience sPTL and PPROM. Such an inflammatory profile includes increased monocyte chemoattractants, cytokines indicative of macrophage and T-cell activation, and reduced antimicrobial proteins/peptides. The vaginal immunoproteome has improved predictive value over maternal characteristics alone for identifying women at risk for early (<34 weeks) sPTB.
Conclusions:
The vaginal immunoproteome undergoes homeostatic changes throughout gestation and deviations from this shift are associated with sPTB. Furthermore, the vaginal immunoproteome can be leveraged as a potential biomarker for early sPTB, a subset of sPTB associated with extremely adverse neonatal outcomes.
Funding:
This research was conducted by the Perinatology Research Branch, Division of Obstetrics and Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Division of Intramural Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (NICHD/NIH/DHHS) under contract HHSN275201300006C. ALT, KRT, and NGL were supported by the Wayne State University Perinatal Initiative in Maternal, Perinatal and Child Health.
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- Computational and Systems Biology
- Genetics and Genomics
Runs of homozygosity (ROH) segments, contiguous homozygous regions in a genome were traditionally linked to families and inbred populations. However, a growing literature suggests that ROHs are ubiquitous in outbred populations. Still, most existing genetic studies of ROH in populations are limited to aggregated ROH content across the genome, which does not offer the resolution for mapping causal loci. This limitation is mainly due to a lack of methods for the efficient identification of shared ROH diplotypes. Here, we present a new method, ROH-DICE, to find large ROH diplotype clusters, sufficiently long ROHs shared by a sufficient number of individuals, in large cohorts. ROH-DICE identified over 1 million ROH diplotypes that span over 100 SNPs and are shared by more than 100 UK Biobank participants. Moreover, we found significant associations of clustered ROH diplotypes across the genome with various self-reported diseases, with the strongest associations found between the extended HLA region and autoimmune disorders. We found an association between a diplotype covering the HFE gene and hemochromatosis, even though the well-known causal SNP was not directly genotyped or imputed. Using a genome-wide scan, we identified a putative association between carriers of an ROH diplotype in chromosome 4 and an increase in mortality among COVID-19 patients (P-value=1.82×10-11). In summary, our ROH-DICE method, by calling out large ROH diplotypes in a large outbred population, enables further population genetics into the demographic history of large populations. More importantly, our method enables a new genome-wide mapping approach for finding disease-causing loci with multi-marker recessive effects at a population scale.
