PUBLICATION
VANGL1 rare variants associated with neural tube defects affect convergent extension in zebrafish
- Authors
- Reynolds, A., McDearmid, J.R., Lachance, S., Marco, P.D., Merello, E., Capra, V., Gros, P., Drapeau, P., and Kibar, Z.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-100105-38
- Date
- 2010
- Source
- Mechanisms of Development 127(7-8): 385-392 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Drapeau, Pierre
- Keywords
- Neural tube defects, VANGL genes, Convergent extension, Planar cell polarity, Zebrafish model
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Biological Assay
- Carrier Proteins/genetics*
- Carrier Proteins/metabolism
- Conserved Sequence
- Embryo, Nonmammalian/drug effects
- Embryo, Nonmammalian/metabolism
- Evolution, Molecular
- Humans
- Membrane Proteins/genetics*
- Membrane Proteins/metabolism
- Mice
- Mutant Proteins/metabolism
- Mutation/genetics*
- Neural Tube Defects/genetics*
- Oligonucleotides, Antisense/pharmacology
- Phenotype
- Zebrafish/embryology*
- Zebrafish/genetics*
- Zebrafish Proteins/genetics*
- Zebrafish Proteins/metabolism
- PubMed
- 20043994 Full text @ Mech. Dev.
Citation
Reynolds, A., McDearmid, J.R., Lachance, S., Marco, P.D., Merello, E., Capra, V., Gros, P., Drapeau, P., and Kibar, Z. (2010) VANGL1 rare variants associated with neural tube defects affect convergent extension in zebrafish. Mechanisms of Development. 127(7-8):385-392.
Abstract
In humans, rare non synonymous variants in the planar cell polarity gene VANGL1 are associated with neural tube defects (NTDs). These variants were hypothesized to be pathogenic based mainly on genetic studies in a large cohort of NTD patients. In this study, we validate the potential pathogenic effect of these mutations in vivo by investigating their effect on convergent extension in zebrafish. Knocking down the expression of tri, the orthologue of Vangl2, using an antisense morpholino (MO), as shown previously, led to a defective convergent extension (CE) manifested by a shortened body axis and widened somites. Co-injection of the human VANGL1 with the tri-MO was able to partially rescue the tri-MO induced phenotype in zebrafish. In contrast, co-injection of two human VANGL1 variants, p.Val239Ile and p.Met328Thr, failed to rescue this phenotype. We next carried out overexpression studies where we measured the ability of the human VANGL1 alleles to induce a CE phenotype when injected at high doses in zebrafish embryos. While overexpressing the wild-type allele led to a severely defective CE, overexpression of either p.Val239Ile or p.Met328Thr variant failed to do so. Results from both tri-MO knockdown/rescue results and overexpression assays suggest that these two variants most likely represent "loss-of-function" alleles that affect protein function during embryonic development. Our study demonstrates a high degree of functional conservation of VANGL genes across evolution and provides a model system for studying potential variants identified in human NTDs.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping