The advent of new genomic sequencing technologies has made the task of gene discovery in human developmental disorders highly efficient. Simultaneously, advances in gene targeting in model organisms, specifically in zebrafish, have made semi-high throughput validation and analysis of human candidate genes feasible, including those responsible for craniofacial disorders. This application for a new spoke project in FaceBase 2 will take advantage of this convergence of new technologies to identify and functionally validate approximately two dozen genes involved in novel aspects of human craniofacial development. Specifically, we will take advantage of already ascertained collections of craniofacial dysmorphoses from Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) and from King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) in Saudi Arabia, where the high incidence of consanguinity makes autozygosity mapping and the identification of recessive causal loci highly feasible. We will extend the work of FaceBase beyond its current focus on disorders of palatal development by including a relatively wide range of craniofacial disorders that involve other components of the craniofacial complex. In addition, use of resources already compiled by FaceBase, including detailed gene expression data in mouse and zebrafish, enhancer analyses, and genome wide association studies, in combination with the present data and publicly available datasets, will further facilitate the functional annotation of these newly validated gene. To provide valuable deliverable resources to other FaceBase investigators and to the community at large, we will pursue three Specific Aims.
In Aim 1, we will ascertain and recruit patients with a wide range of craniofacial dysmorphoses of likely monogenic etiology. These patients will not only be identified at the BCH and KFSHRC referral centers, but also solicited from other clinical investigators and potentially even the FaceBase Biorepository.
In Aim 2, patients will be prioritized for further study based on the genetic likelihood of identifying a caual variant. We will then perform whole exome and in some cases whole genome sequence (WES/WGS) analysis, on the proband and potentially other family members, using aCGH to ensure genomic integrity and autozygosity mapping where applicable. An existing state-of-the-art computational pipeline will be used to derive a limited set of potentially causal DNA sequence variants and candidate genes. Lastly, in Aim 3, in cases where causation cannot be readily established from known function and expression data, we will seek additional independent confirmatory cases and, in parallel, employ a rapid analysis strategy consisting of high-throughput gene expression analysis, morpholino knockdown, and mutagenesis and transgenesis to prepare GOF and LOF alleles. The results will be forwarded to the FaceBase 2 Coordinating Center, with the key deliverables to the community being a validated gene list of human craniofacial developmental regulatory genes and a set of corresponding zebrafish mutants that can be widely shared for further detailed study.
This project, which will benefit from and contribute to a larger consortium called FaceBase 2 of which it is a part, and will recruit patients and their families with congenital birth defects that affect the skull and facial (craniofacial) regions. We will collct and analyze genomic DNA from these individuals in order to find genes that may be responsible for their craniofacial conditions. To prove that we have identified the correct gene in each case, we will study the normal expression of the candidate gene and the behavior of the mutated form of the gene in fish and mouse models, and we will seek additional subjects with the same craniofacial disorder to see if they also have mutations in the same gene.
