Search

Recent genome-wide association studies of age-at-onset in Huntington's disease (HD) point to distinct modes of potential disease modification: altering the rate of somatic expansion of the HTT CAG repeat or altering the resulting CAG threshold length-triggered toxicity process. Here, we evaluated the mouse orthologs of two HD age-at-onset modifier genes, FAN1 and RRM2B, for an influence on somatic instability of the expanded CAG repeat in Htt CAG knock-in mice. Fan1 knock-out increased somatic expansion of Htt CAG repeats, in the juvenile- and the adult-onset HD ranges, whereas knock-out of Rrm2b did not greatly alter somatic Htt CAG repeat instability. Simultaneous knock-out of Mlh1, the ortholog of a third HD age-at-onset modifier gene (MLH1), which suppresses somatic expansion of the Htt knock-in CAG repeat, blocked the Fan1 knock-out-induced acceleration of somatic CAG expansion. This genetic interaction indicates that functional MLH1 is required for the CAG repeat destabilizing effect of FAN1 loss. Thus, in HD, it is uncertain whether the RRM2B modifier effect on timing of onset may be due to a DNA instability mechanism. In contrast, the FAN1 modifier effects reveal that functional FAN1 acts to suppress somatic CAG repeat expansion, likely in genetic interaction with other DNA instability modifiers whose combined effects can hasten or delay onset and other CAG repeat length-driven phenotypes., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The expanded HTT CAG repeat causing Huntington's disease (HD) exhibits somatic expansion proposed to drive the rate of disease onset by eliciting a pathological process that ultimately claims vulnerable cells. To gain insight into somatic expansion in humans, we performed comprehensive quantitative analyses of CAG expansion in ~50 central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral postmortem tissues from seven adult-onset and one juvenile-onset HD individual. We also assessed ATXN1 CAG repeat expansion in brain regions of an individual with a neurologically and pathologically distinct repeat expansion disorder, spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1). Our findings reveal similar profiles of tissue instability in all HD individuals, which, notably, were also apparent in the SCA1 individual. CAG expansion was observed in all tissues, but to different degrees, with multiple cortical regions and neostriatum tending to have the greatest instability in the CNS, and liver in the periphery. These patterns indicate different propensities for CAG expansion contributed by disease locus-independent trans-factors and demonstrate that expansion per se is not sufficient to cause cell type or disease-specific pathology. Rather, pathology may reflect distinct toxic processes triggered by different repeat lengths across cell types and diseases. We also find that the HTT CAG length-dependent expansion propensity of an individual is reflected in all tissues and in cerebrospinal fluid. Our data indicate that peripheral cells may be a useful source to measure CAG expansion in biomarker assays for therapeutic efforts, prompting efforts to dissect underlying mechanisms of expansion that may differ between the brain and periphery., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disease caused by an expanded CAG repeat in HTT. Many clinical characteristics of HD such as age at motor onset are determined largely by the size of HTT CAG repeat. However, emerging evidence strongly supports a role for other genetic factors in modifying the disease pathogenesis driven by mutant huntingtin. A recent genome-wide association analysis to discover genetic modifiers of HD onset age provided initial evidence for modifier loci on chromosomes 8 and 15 and suggestive evidence for a locus on chromosome 3. Here, genotyping of candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms in a cohort of 3,314 additional HD subjects yields independent confirmation of the former two loci and moves the third to genome-wide significance at MLH1, a locus whose mouse orthologue modifies CAG length-dependent phenotypes in a Htt-knock-in mouse model of HD. Both quantitative and dichotomous association analyses implicate a functional variant on ∼32% of chromosomes with the beneficial modifier effect that delays HD motor onset by 0.7 years/allele. Genomic DNA capture and sequencing of a modifier haplotype localize the functional variation to a 78 kb region spanning the 3'end of MLH1 and the 5'end of the neighboring LRRFIP2, and marked by an isoleucine-valine missense variant in MLH1. Analysis of expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTLs) provides modest support for altered regulation of MLH1 and LRRFIP2, raising the possibility that the modifier affects regulation of both genes. Finally, polygenic modification score and heritability analyses suggest the existence of additional genetic modifiers, supporting expanded, comprehensive genetic analysis of larger HD datasets., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Huntington's disease is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disease caused by the expansion of a CAG repeat in the HTT gene. In addition to the length of the CAG expansion, factors such as genetic background have been shown to contribute to the age at onset of neurological symptoms. A central challenge in understanding the disease progression that leads from the HD mutation to massive cell death in the striatum is the ability to characterize the subtle and early functional consequences of the CAG expansion longitudinally. We used dense time course sampling between 4 and 20 postnatal weeks to characterize early transcriptomic, molecular and cellular phenotypes in the striatum of six distinct knock-in mouse models of the HD mutation. We studied the effects of the HttQ111 allele on the C57BL/6J, CD-1, FVB/NCr1, and 129S2/SvPasCrl genetic backgrounds, and of two additional alleles, HttQ92 and HttQ50, on the C57BL/6J background. We describe the emergence of a transcriptomic signature in HttQ111/+  mice involving hundreds of differentially expressed genes and changes in diverse molecular pathways. We also show that this time course spanned the onset of mutant huntingtin nuclear localization phenotypes and somatic CAG-length instability in the striatum. Genetic background strongly influenced the magnitude and age at onset of these effects. This work provides a foundation for understanding the earliest transcriptional and molecular changes contributing to HD pathogenesis., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

In Huntington's disease (HD), the size of the expanded HTT CAG repeat mutation is the primary driver of the processes that determine age at onset of motor symptoms. However, correlation of cellular biochemical parameters also extends across the normal repeat range, supporting the view that the CAG repeat represents a functional polymorphism with dominant effects determined by the longer allele. A central challenge to defining the functional consequences of this single polymorphism is the difficulty of distinguishing its subtle effects from the multitude of other sources of biological variation. We demonstrate that an analytical approach based upon continuous correlation with CAG size was able to capture the modest (∼21%) contribution of the repeat to the variation in genome-wide gene expression in 107 lymphoblastoid cell lines, with alleles ranging from 15 to 92 CAGs. Furthermore, a mathematical model from an iterative strategy yielded predicted CAG repeat lengths that were significantly positively correlated with true CAG allele size and negatively correlated with age at onset of motor symptoms. Genes negatively correlated with repeat size were also enriched in a set of genes whose expression were CAG-correlated in human HD cerebellum. These findings both reveal the relatively small, but detectable impact of variation in the CAG allele in global data in these peripheral cells and provide a strategy for building multi-dimensional data-driven models of the biological network that drives the HD disease process by continuous analysis across allelic panels of neuronal cells vulnerable to the dominant effects of the HTT CAG repeat.

Huntington's disease (HD) involves marked early neurodegeneration in the striatum, whereas the cerebellum is relatively spared despite the ubiquitous expression of full-length mutant huntingtin, implying that inherent tissue-specific differences determine susceptibility to the HD CAG mutation. To understand this tissue specificity, we compared early mutant huntingtin-induced gene expression changes in striatum to those in cerebellum in young Hdh CAG knock-in mice, prior to onset of evident pathological alterations. Endogenous levels of full-length mutant huntingtin caused qualitatively similar, but quantitatively different gene expression changes in the two brain regions. Importantly, the quantitatively different responses in the striatum and cerebellum in mutant mice were well accounted for by the intrinsic molecular differences in gene expression between the striatum and cerebellum in wild-type animals. Tissue-specific gene expression changes in response to the HD mutation, therefore, appear to reflect the different inherent capacities of these tissues to buffer qualitatively similar effects of mutant huntingtin. These findings highlight a role for intrinsic quantitative tissue differences in contributing to HD pathogenesis, and likely to other neurodegenerative disorders exhibiting tissue-specificity, thereby guiding the search for effective therapeutic interventions.

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by expansion of the polymorphic polyglutamine segment in the huntingtin protein. Full-length huntingtin is thought to be a predominant HEAT repeat alpha-solenoid, implying a role as a facilitator of macromolecular complexes. Here we have investigated huntingtin's domain structure and potential intersection with epigenetic silencer polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), suggested by shared embryonic deficiency phenotypes. Analysis of a set of full-length recombinant huntingtins, with different polyglutamine regions, demonstrated dramatic conformational flexibility, with an accessible hinge separating two large alpha-helical domains. Moreover, embryos lacking huntingtin exhibited impaired PRC2 regulation of Hox gene expression, trophoblast giant cell differentiation, paternal X chromosome inactivation and histone H3K27 tri-methylation, while full-length endogenous nuclear huntingtin in wild-type embryoid bodies (EBs) was associated with PRC2 subunits and was detected with trimethylated histone H3K27 at Hoxb9. Supporting a direct stimulatory role, full-length recombinant huntingtin significantly increased the histone H3K27 tri-methylase activity of reconstituted PRC2 in vitro, and structure-function analysis demonstrated that the polyglutamine region augmented full-length huntingtin PRC2 stimulation, both in Hdh(Q111) EBs and in vitro, with reconstituted PRC2. Knowledge of full-length huntingtin's alpha-helical organization and role as a facilitator of the multi-subunit PRC2 complex provides a novel starting point for studying PRC2 regulation, implicates this chromatin repressive complex in a neurodegenerative disorder and sets the stage for further study of huntingtin's molecular function and the impact of its modulatory polyglutamine region.

The age of onset of Huntington's disease (HD) is determined primarily by the length of the HD CAG repeat mutation, but is also influenced by other modifying factors. Delineating these modifiers is a critical step towards developing validated therapeutic targets in HD patients. The HD CAG repeat is somatically unstable, undergoing progressive length increases over time, particularly in brain regions that are the targets of neurodegeneration. Here, we have explored the hypothesis that somatic instability of the HD CAG repeat is itself a modifier of disease. Using small-pool PCR, we quantified somatic instability in the cortex region of the brain from a cohort of HD individuals exhibiting phenotypic extremes of young and old disease onset as predicted by the length of their constitutive HD CAG repeat lengths. After accounting for constitutive repeat length, somatic instability was found to be a significant predictor of onset age, with larger repeat length gains associated with earlier disease onset. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that somatic HD CAG repeat length expansions in target tissues contribute to the HD pathogenic process, and support pursuing factors that modify somatic instability as viable therapeutic targets.

Genetically precise models of Huntington's disease (HD), Hdh CAG knock-in mice, are powerful systems in which phenotypes associated with expanded HD CAG repeats are studied. To dissect the genetic pathways that underlie such phenotypes, we have generated Hdh(Q111) knock-in mouse lines that are congenic for C57BL/6, FVB/N and 129Sv inbred genetic backgrounds and investigated four Hdh(Q111) phenotypes in these three genetic backgrounds: the intergenerational instability of the HD CAG repeat and the striatal-specific somatic HD CAG repeat expansion, nuclear mutant huntingtin accumulation and intranuclear inclusion formation. Our results reveal increased intergenerational and somatic instability of the HD CAG repeat in C57BL/6 and FVB/N backgrounds compared with the 129Sv background. The accumulation of nuclear mutant huntingtin and the formation of intranuclear inclusions were fastest in the C57BL/6 background, slowest in the 129Sv background and intermediate in the FVB/N background. Inbred strain-specific differences were independent of constitutive HD CAG repeat size and did not correlate with Hdh mRNA levels. These data provide evidence for genetic modifiers of both intergenerational HD CAG repeat instability and striatal-specific phenotypes. Different relative contributions of C57BL/6 and 129Sv genetic backgrounds to the onset of nuclear mutant huntingtin and somatic HD CAG repeat expansion predict that the initiation of each of these two phenotypes is modified by different genes. Our findings set the stage for defining disease-related genetic pathways that will ultimately provide insight into disease mechanism.

Defects in gene transcription and mitochondrial function have been implicated in the dominant disease process that leads to the loss of striatal neurons in Huntington's disease (HD). Here we have used precise genetic HD mouse and striatal cell models to investigate the hypothesis that decreased cAMP responsive element (CRE)-mediated gene transcription may reflect impaired energy metabolism. We found that reduced CRE-signaling in Hdh(Q111) striatum, monitored by brain derived neurotrophic factor and phospho-CRE binding protein (CREB), predated inclusion formation. Furthermore, cAMP levels in Hdh(Q111) striatum declined from an early age (10 weeks), and cAMP was significantly decreased in HD postmortem brain and lymphoblastoid cells, attesting to a chronic deficit in man. Reduced CRE-signaling in cultured STHdh(Q111) striatal cells was associated with cytosolic CREB binding protein that mirrored diminished cAMP synthesis. Moreover, mutant cells exhibited mitochondrial respiratory chain impairment, evidenced by decreased ATP and ATP/ADP ratio, impaired MTT conversion and heightened sensitivity to 3-nitropropionic acid. Thus, our findings strongly suggest that impaired ATP synthesis and diminished cAMP levels amplify the early HD disease cascade by decreasing CRE-regulated gene transcription and altering energy dependent processes essential to neuronal cell survival.

Somatic instability of expanded HD CAG repeats that encode the polyglutamine tract in mutant huntingtin has been implicated in the striatal selectivity of Huntington's disease (HD) pathology. Here in Hdh(Q111) mice, we have tested whether a genetic background deficient in Msh2, expected to eliminate the unstable behavior of the 109 CAG array inserted into the murine HD gene, would alter the timing or striatal specificity of a dominant disease phenotype that predicts late-onset neurodegeneration. Our analyses of Hdh(Q111/+):Msh2(+/+) and Hdh(Q111/+): Msh2(-/-) progeny revealed that, while inherited instability involved Msh2-dependent and -independent mechanisms, lack of Msh2 was sufficient to abrogate progressive HD CAG repeat expansion in striatum. The absence of Msh2 also eliminated striatal mutant huntingtin with somatically expanded glutamine tracts and caused an approximately 5 month delay in nuclear mutant protein accumulation, but did not alter the striatal specificity of this early phenotype. Thus, somatic HD CAG instability appears to be a consequence of a striatal-selective disease process that accelerates the timing of an early disease phenotype, via expansion of the glutamine tract in mutant huntingtin. Therefore Msh2, as a striking modifier of early disease onset in a precise genetic HD mouse model, provides a novel target for the development of pharmacological agents that aim to slow pathogenesis in man.

The hallmark striatal neurodegeneration of Huntington's disease (HD) is first triggered by a dominant property of the expanded glutamine tract in mutant huntingtin that increases in severity with glutamine size. Indeed 111-glutamine murine huntingtin leads to a dominant cascade of phenotypes in Hdh(Q111) mice, although these abnormalities are not manifest in Hdh(Q50) mice, with 50-glutamine mutant protein. Therefore, to identify phenotypes that might reflect events closer to the fundamental trigger mechanism, and that can be measured as a consequence of adult-onset HD mutant huntingtin, we have screened for altered expression of genes conserved in evolution, which are likely to encode essential proteins. Probes generated from Hdh(Q111) homozygote and wild-type striatal RNAs were hybridized to human gene segments on filter arrays, disclosing a mutant-specific increase in hybridization to Rrs1, encoding a ribosomal protein. Subsequent, quantitative RT-PCR assays demonstrated increased Rrs1 mRNA from 3 weeks of age in homozygous and heterozygous Hdh(Q111) striatum and increased Rrs1 mRNA expression with a single copy's worth of 50-glutamine mutant huntingtin in Hdh(Q50) striatum. Moreover, quantitative RT-PCR assays for the human homologue demonstrated elevated Rrs1 mRNA in HD compared with control postmortem brain. These findings, therefore, support a chronic impact of mutant huntingtin on an essential ribosomal regulatory gene to be investigated for its role very early in HD pathogenesis.

In Huntington's disease (HD), CAG repeats extend a glutamine tract in huntingtin to initiate the dominant loss of striatal neurons and chorea. Neuropathological changes include the formation of insoluble mutant N-terminal fragment, as nuclear/neuropil inclusions and filter-trap amyloid, which may either participate in the disease process or be a degradative by-product. In young Hdh knock-in mice, CAGs that expand the glutamine tract in mouse huntingtin to childhood-onset HD lengths lead to nuclear accumulation of full-length mutant huntingtin and later accumulation of insoluble fragment. Here we report late-onset neurodegeneration and gait deficits in older Hdh(Q111) knock-in mice, demonstrating that the nuclear phenotypes comprise early stages in a disease process that conforms to genetic and pathologic criteria determined in HD patients. Furthermore, using the early nuclear-accumulation phenotypes as surrogate markers, we show in genetic experiments that the disease process, initiated by full-length mutant protein, is hastened by co-expression of mutant fragment; therefore, accrual of insoluble-product in already compromised neurons may exacerbate pathogenesis. In contrast, timing of early disease events was not altered by normal huntingtin or by mutant caspase-1, two proteins shown to reduce inclusions and glutamine toxicity in other HD models. Thus, potential HD therapies in man might be directed at different levels: preventing the disease-initiating mechanism or slowing the subsequent progression of pathogenesis.