Effects of gene dosage on cognitive ability: A function-based association study across brain and non-brain processes

Guillaume Huguet*, Thomas Renne, Cécile Poulain, Alma Dubuc, Kuldeep Kumar, Sayeh Kazem, Worrawat Engchuan, Omar Shanta, Elise Douard, Catherine Proulx, Martineau Jean-Louis, Zohra Saci, Josephine Mollon, Laura M Schultz, Emma E. M. Knowles, Simon R. Cox, David Porteous, Gail Davies, Paul Redmond, Sarah E. HarrisGunter Schumann, Guillaume Dumas, Aurélie Labbe, Zdenka Pausova, Tomas Paus, Stephen W. Scherer, Jonathan Sebat, Laura Almasy, David C. Glahn, Sébastien Jacquemont

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Genomic Copy Number Variants (CNVs) that increase risk for neurodevelopmental disorders are also associated with lower cognition. Most studies have focused on the most frequently recurrent CNVs. However, it has been difficult to investigate ultra-rare CNVs and as a result, we have a limited understanding of the full range of gene-dosage-sensitive biological processes linked to cognitive ability. We performed GWAS and functional burden analyses across tissues, cell-types, and ontologies to test the association between all rare CNVs and cognitive ability in 258,292 individuals. We identified a novel association of a duplication at 2q12.3 with higher performance in cognitive ability. Functional burden tests performed on 6,502 gene sets identified 864 gene-sets associated with cognition. The effects-sizes of deletion and duplication were negatively correlated, suggesting that functions across all levels of biological observations were either sensitive to deletion (e.g. subcortical and postsynaptic functions.) or duplication (e.g. cerebral cortex and presynaptic functions). Associations between non-brain tissue and cognition were driven in part by genes under constraint with lower tissue specificity. The latter may help investigate medical comorbidities observed in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
Original languageEnglish
Article number100721
Number of pages21
JournalCell Genomics
Volume4
Issue number12
Early online date11 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Copy Number Variants (CNV)
  • gene dosage
  • cognitive ability
  • CNV-GWAS
  • burden association
  • genetic constraint
  • transcriptomic
  • gene ontology

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