Identification of a large set of rare complete human knockouts

P Sulem, H Helgason, A Oddson, H Stefansson… - Nature …, 2015 - nature.com
P Sulem, H Helgason, A Oddson, H Stefansson, SA Gudjonsson, F Zink, E Hjartarson…
Nature genetics, 2015nature.com
Loss-of-function mutations cause many mendelian diseases. Here we aimed to create a
catalog of autosomal genes that are completely knocked out in humans by rare loss-of-
function mutations. We sequenced the whole genomes of 2,636 Icelanders and imputed the
sequence variants identified in this set into 101,584 additional chip-genotyped and phased
Icelanders. We found a total of 6,795 autosomal loss-of-function SNPs and indels in 4,924
genes. Of the genotyped Icelanders, 7.7% are homozygotes or compound heterozygotes for …
Abstract
Loss-of-function mutations cause many mendelian diseases. Here we aimed to create a catalog of autosomal genes that are completely knocked out in humans by rare loss-of-function mutations. We sequenced the whole genomes of 2,636 Icelanders and imputed the sequence variants identified in this set into 101,584 additional chip-genotyped and phased Icelanders. We found a total of 6,795 autosomal loss-of-function SNPs and indels in 4,924 genes. Of the genotyped Icelanders, 7.7% are homozygotes or compound heterozygotes for loss-of-function mutations with a minor allele frequency (MAF) below 2% in 1,171 genes (complete knockouts). Genes that are highly expressed in the brain are less often completely knocked out than other genes. Homozygous loss-of-function offspring of two heterozygous parents occurred less frequently than expected (deficit of 136 per 10,000 transmissions for variants with MAF <2%, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 10–261).
nature.com