Genetic dissection of Down syndrome-associated congenital heart defects using a new mouse mapping panel

Abstract

Down syndrome (DS), caused by trisomy of human chromosome 21 (Hsa21), is the most common cause of congenital heart defects (CHD), yet the genetic and mechanistic causes of these defects remain unknown. To identify dosage-sensitive genes that cause DS phenotypes, including CHD, we used chromosome engineering to generate a mapping panel of 7 mouse strains with partial trisomies of regions of mouse chromosome 16 orthologous to Hsa21. Using high-resolution episcopic microscopy and three-dimensional modeling we show that these strains accurately model DS CHD. Systematic analysis of the 7 strains identified a minimal critical region sufficient to cause CHD when present in 3 copies, and showed that it contained at least two dosage-sensitive loci. Furthermore, these new strains model a specific subtype of atrio-ventricular septal defects with exclusive ventricular shunting and demonstrate that, contrary to current hypotheses, these CHD are not due to failure in formation of the dorsal mesenchymal protrusion.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Eva Lana-Elola

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Sheona Watson-Scales

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Amy Slender

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Dorota Gibbins

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Alexandrine Martineau

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Charlotte Douglas

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Timothy Mohun

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Elizabeth MC Fisher

    Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Victor LJ Tybulewicz

    Mill Hill Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    Victor.T@crick.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal work was carried out under a Project Licence granted by the UK Home Office.

Copyright

© 2016, Lana-Elola et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 4,483
    views
  • 730
    downloads
  • 82
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Eva Lana-Elola
  2. Sheona Watson-Scales
  3. Amy Slender
  4. Dorota Gibbins
  5. Alexandrine Martineau
  6. Charlotte Douglas
  7. Timothy Mohun
  8. Elizabeth MC Fisher
  9. Victor LJ Tybulewicz
(2016)
Genetic dissection of Down syndrome-associated congenital heart defects using a new mouse mapping panel
eLife 5:e11614.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11614

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11614

Further reading

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
    Thi Thom Mac, Teddy Fauquier ... Thierry Brue
    Research Article

    Deficient Anterior pituitary with common Variable Immune Deficiency (DAVID) syndrome results from NFKB2 heterozygous mutations, causing adrenocorticotropic hormone deficiency (ACTHD) and primary hypogammaglobulinemia. While NFKB signaling plays a crucial role in the immune system, its connection to endocrine symptoms is unclear. We established a human disease model to investigate the role of NFKB2 in pituitary development by creating pituitary organoids from CRISPR/Cas9-edited human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Introducing homozygous TBX19K146R/K146R missense pathogenic variant in hiPSC, an allele found in congenital isolated ACTHD, led to a strong reduction of corticotrophs number in pituitary organoids. Then, we characterized the development of organoids harboring NFKB2D865G/D865G mutations found in DAVID patients. NFKB2D865G/D865G mutation acted at different levels of development with mutant organoids displaying changes in the expression of genes involved on pituitary progenitor generation (HESX1, PITX1, LHX3), hypothalamic secreted factors (BMP4, FGF8, FGF10), epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, lineage precursors development (TBX19, POU1F1) and corticotrophs terminal differentiation (PCSK1, POMC), and showed drastic reduction in the number of corticotrophs. Our results provide strong evidence for the direct role of NFKB2 mutations in the endocrine phenotype observed in patients leading to a new classification of a NFKB2 variant of previously unknown clinical significance as pathogenic in pituitary development.