The novel lncRNA lnc-NR2F1 is pro-neurogenic and mutated in human neurodevelopmental disorders
Abstract
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to act as important cell biological regulators including cell fate decisions but are often ignored in human genetics. Combining differential lncRNA expression during neuronal lineage induction with copy number variation morbidity maps of a cohort of children with autism spectrum disorder/intellectual disability versus healthy controls revealed focal genomic mutations affecting several lncRNA candidate loci. Here we find that a t(5:12) chromosomal translocation in a family manifesting neurodevelopmental symptoms disrupts specifically lnc-NR2F1. We further show that lnc-NR2F1 is an evolutionarily conserved lncRNA functionally enhances induced neuronal cell maturation and directly occupies and regulates transcription of neuronal genes including autism-associated genes. Thus, integrating human genetics and functional testing in neuronal lineage induction is a promising approach for discovering candidate lncRNAs involved in neurodevelopmental diseases.
Data availability
Sequencing data have been deposited in GEO under accession code GSE115079.
-
A Transcriptomic Atlas of Mouse Neocortical LayersNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE27243.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
NIH Office of the Director (RC4-NS073015)
- Marius Wernig
- Howard Y Chang
NIH Office of the Director (P50-HG007735)
- Howard Y Chang
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
- Marius Wernig
- Howard Y Chang
NIH Office of the Director (RO1-HD39331)
- Anand Srivastava
Self Regional Healthcare Foundation
- Anand Srivastava
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All mouse work was performed according to IACUC approved protocols at Stanford University (APLAC-21565). Samples in the paper were obtained without determining their sex. All animals were housed in an animal facility with a 12hr light/dark cycle.
Human subjects: The study protocol, consent form, consent to publish and privacy practices were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Self Regional Healthcare, Greenwood, SC (Reference number Pro00074882).
Copyright
© 2019, Ang 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.
Metrics
-
- 5,514
- views
-
- 872
- downloads
-
- 60
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Genetics and Genomics
Due to proteostasis stress induced by aging or disease, misfolded proteins can form toxic intermediate species of aggregates and eventually mature into less toxic inclusion bodies (IBs). Here, using a yeast imaging-based screen, we identified 84 potential synphilin-1 (SY1) IB regulators and isolated the conserved sphingolipid metabolic components in the most enriched groups. Furthermore, we show that, in both yeast cells and mammalian cells, SY1 IBs are associated with mitochondria. Pharmacological inhibition of the sphingolipid metabolism pathway or knockout of its key genes results in a delayed IB maturation and increased SY1 cytotoxicity. We postulate that SY1 IB matures by association with the mitochondrion membrane, and that sphingolipids stimulate the maturation via their membrane-modulating function and thereby protecting cells from SY1 cytotoxicity. Our findings identify a conserved cellular component essential for IB maturation and suggest a mechanism by which cells may detoxify the pathogenic protein aggregates through forming mitochondrion-associated IBs.
-
- Genetics and Genomics
Advances in single-cell sequencing technologies have provided novel insights into the dynamics of gene expression and cellular heterogeneity within tissues and have enabled the construction of transcriptomic cell atlases. However, linking anatomical information to transcriptomic data and positively identifying the cell types that correspond to gene expression clusters in single-cell sequencing data sets remains a challenge. We describe a straightforward genetic barcoding approach that takes advantage of the powerful genetic tools in Drosophila to allow in vivo tagging of defined cell populations. This method, called Targeted Genetically-Encoded Multiplexing (TaG-EM), involves inserting a DNA barcode just upstream of the polyadenylation site in a Gal4-inducible UAS-GFP construct so that the barcode sequence can be read out during single-cell sequencing, labeling a cell population of interest. By creating many such independently barcoded fly strains, TaG-EM enables positive identification of cell types in cell atlas projects, identification of multiplet droplets, and barcoding of experimental timepoints, conditions, and replicates. Furthermore, we demonstrate that TaG-EM barcodes can be read out using next-generation sequencing to facilitate population-scale behavioral measurements. Thus, TaG-EM has the potential to enable large-scale behavioral screens in addition to improving the ability to multiplex and reliably annotate single-cell transcriptomic experiments.