Predicting the impact of Lynch syndrome-causing missense mutations from structural calculations

Sofie V, Nielsen, Amelie Stein, Alexander B. Dinitzen, Elena Papaleo, Michael H. Tatham, Esben Guldahl Poulsen, Maher Mahmoud Kassem, Lene Juel Rasmussen, Kresten Lindorff-Larsen, Rasmus Hartmann-Petersen

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

68 Citations (Scopus)
420 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Accurate methods to assess the pathogenicity of mutations are needed to fully leverage the possibilities of genome sequencing in diagnosis. Current data-driven and bioinformatics approaches are, however, limited by the large number of new variations found in each newly sequenced genome, and often do not provide direct mechanistic insight. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, that saturation mutagenesis, biophysical modeling and co-variation analysis, performed in silico, can predict the abundance, metabolic stability, and function of proteins inside living cells. As a model system, we selected the human mismatch repair protein, MSH2, where missense variants are known to cause the hereditary cancer predisposition disease, known as Lynch syndrome. We show that the majority of disease-causing MSH2 mutations give rise to folding defects and proteasome-dependent degradation rather than inherent loss of function, and accordingly our in silico modeling data accurately identifies disease-causing mutations and outperforms the traditionally used genetic disease predictors. Thus, in conclusion, in silico biophysical modeling should be considered for making genotype-phenotype predictions and for diagnosis of Lynch syndrome, and perhaps other hereditary diseases.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1006739
JournalPLoS Genetics
Volume13
Issue number4
Number of pages26
ISSN1553-7390
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Apr 2017

Keywords

  • Journal Article

Cite this