Characterising and Predicting Haploinsufficiency in the Human Genome

Abstract

Haploinsufficiency, wherein a single functional copy of a gene is insufficient to maintain normal function, is a major cause of dominant disease. Human disease studies have identified several hundred haploinsufficient (HI) genes. We have compiled a map of 1,079 haplosufficient (HS) genes by systematic identification of genes unambiguously and repeatedly compromised by copy number variation among 8,458 apparently healthy individuals and contrasted the genomic, evolutionary, functional, and network properties between these HS genes and known HI genes. We found that HI genes are typically longer and have more conserved coding sequences and promoters than HS genes. HI genes exhibit higher levels of expression during early development and greater tissue specificity. Moreover, within a probabilistic human functional interaction network HI genes have more interaction partners and greater network proximity to other known HI genes. We built a predictive model on the basis of these differences and annotated 12,443 genes with their predicted probability of being haploinsufficient. We validated these predictions of haploinsufficiency by demonstrating that genes with a high predicted probability of exhibiting haploinsufficiency are enriched among genes implicated in human dominant diseases and among genes causing abnormal phenotypes in heterozygous knockout mice. We have transformed these gene-based haploinsufficiency predictions into haploinsufficiency scores for genic deletions, which we demonstrate to better discriminate between pathogenic and benign deletions than consideration of the deletion size or numbers of genes deleted. These robust predictions of haploinsufficiency support clinical interpretation of novel loss-of-function variants and prioritization of variants and genes for follow-up studies.

Author Summary

Humans, like most complex organisms, have two copies of most genes in their genome, one from the mother and one from the father. This redundancy provides a back-up copy for most genes, should one copy be lost through mutation. For a minority of genes, one functional copy is not enough to sustain normal human function, and mutations causing the loss of function of one of the copies of such genes are a major cause of childhood developmental diseases. Over the past 20 years medical geneticists have identified over 300 such genes, but it is not known how many of the 22,000 genes in our genome may also be sensitive to gene loss. By comparing these ∼300 genes known to be sensitive to gene loss with over 1,000 genes where loss of a single copy does not result in disease, we have identified some key evolutionary and functional similarities between genes sensitive to loss of a single copy. We have used these similarities to predict for most genes in the genome, whether loss of a single copy is likely to result in disease. These predictions will help in the interpretation of mutations seen in patients.