PUBLICATION

Admixture Mapping of Alzheimer's disease in Caribbean Hispanics identifies a new locus on 22q13.1

Authors
Kizil, C., Sariya, S., Kim, Y.A., Rajabli, F., Martin, E., Reyes-Dumeyer, D., Vardarajan, B., Maldonado, A., Haines, J.L., Mayeux, R., Jiménez-Velázquez, I.Z., Santa-Maria, I., Tosto, G.
ID
ZDB-PUB-220403-2
Date
2022
Source
Molecular psychiatry   27(6): 2813-2820 (Journal)
Registered Authors
Kizil, Caghan
Keywords
none
MeSH Terms
  • Alzheimer Disease*/genetics
  • Animals
  • Caribbean Region
  • Drosophila
  • Ethnicity*
  • Humans
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide/genetics
  • Zebrafish
PubMed
35365809 Full text @ Mol. Psychiatry
Abstract
Late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) is significantly more frequent in Hispanics than in non-Hispanic Whites. Ancestry may explain these differences across ethnic groups. To this end, we studied a large cohort of Caribbean Hispanics (CH, N = 8813) and tested the association between Local Ancestry (LA) and LOAD ("admixture mapping") to identify LOAD-associated ancestral blocks, separately for ancestral components (European [EUR], African [AFR], Native American[NA]) and jointly (AFR + NA). Ancestral blocks significant after permutation were fine-mapped employing multi-ethnic whole-exome sequencing (WES) to identify rare variants associated with LOAD (SKAT-O) and replicated in the UK Biobank WES dataset. Candidate genes were validated studying (A) protein expression in human LOAD and control brains; (B) two animal AD models, Drosophila and Zebrafish. In the joint AFR + NA model, we identified four significant ancestral blocks located on chromosomes 1 (p value = 8.94E-05), 6 (p value = 8.63E-05), 21 (p value = 4.64E-05) and 22 (p value = 1.77E-05). Fine-mapping prioritized the GCAT gene on chromosome 22 (SKAT-O p value = 3.45E-05) and replicated in the UK Biobank (SKAT-O p value = 0.05). In LOAD brains, a decrease of 28% in GCAT protein expression was observed (p value = 0.038), and GCAT knockdown in Amyloid-β42 Drosophila exacerbated rough eye phenotype (68% increase, p value = 4.84E-09). In zebrafish, gcat expression increased after acute amyloidosis (34%, p value = 0.0049), and decreased upon anti-inflammatory Interleukin-4 (39%, p value = 2.3E-05). Admixture mapping uncovered genomic regions harboring new LOAD-associated loci that might explain the observed different frequency of LOAD across ethnic groups. Our results suggest that the inflammation-related activity of GCAT is a response to amyloid toxicity, and reduced GCAT expression exacerbates AD pathology.
Genes / Markers
Figures
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Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Antibodies
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping