Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin genes disrupted in autism
De Rubeis S., He X., Goldberg AP., Poultney CS., Samocha K., Cicek AE., Kou Y., Liu L., Fromer M., Walker S., Singh T., Klei L., Kosmicki J., Fu SC., Aleksic B., Biscaldi M., Bolton PF., Brownfeld JM., Cai J., Campbell NG., Carracedo A., Chahrour MH., Chiocchetti AG., Coon H., Crawford EL., Crooks L., Curran SR., Dawson G., Duketis E., Fernandez BA., Gallagher L., Geller E., Guter SJ., Hill RS., Ionita-Laza I., Gonzalez PJ., Kilpinen H., Klauck SM., Kolevzon A., Lee I., Lei J., Lehtimäki T., Lin CF., Ma'ayan A., Marshall CR., McInnes AL., Neale B., Owen MJ., Ozaki N., Parellada M., Parr JR., Purcell S., Puura K., Rajagopalan D., Rehnström K., Reichenberg A., Sabo A., Sachse M., Sanders SJ., Schafer C., Schulte-Rüther M., Skuse D., Stevens C., Szatmari P., Tammimies K., Valladares O., Voran A., Wang LS., Weiss LA., Willsey AJ., Yu TW., Yuen RKC., Cook EH., Freitag CM., Gill M., Hultman CM., Lehner T., Palotie A., Schellenberg GD., Sklar P., State MW., Sutcliffe JS., Walsh CA., Scherer SW., Zwick ME., Barrett JC., Cutler DJ., Roeder K., Devlin B., Daly MJ., Buxbaum JD.
The genetic architecture of autism spectrum disorder involves the interplay of common and rare variants and their impact on hundreds of genes. Using exome sequencing, here we show that analysis of rare coding variation in 3,871 autism cases and 9,937 ancestry-matched or parental controls implicates 22 autosomal genes at a false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05, plus a set of 107 autosomal genes strongly enriched for those likely to affect risk (FDR < 0.30). These 107 genes, which show unusual evolutionary constraint against mutations, incur de novo loss-of-function mutations in over 5% of autistic subjects. Many of the genes implicated encode proteins for synaptic formation, transcriptional regulation and chromatin-remodelling pathways. These include voltage-gated ion channels regulating the propagation of action potentials, pacemaking and excitability-transcription coupling, as well as histone-modifying enzymes and chromatin remodellers - most prominently those that mediate post-translational lysine methylation/demethylation modifications of histones.