1. An In Vivo Cardiac Assay to Determine the Functional Consequences of Putative Long QT Syndrome Mutations
- Author
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H. Cindy Weng, Chuanchau J. Jou, Jian Tao Bian, Xiaoming Sheng, Spencer M. Barnett, and Martin Tristani-Firouzi
- Subjects
Physiology ,Long QT syndrome ,ved/biology.organism_classification_rank.species ,Gene mutation ,medicine.disease_cause ,Bioinformatics ,Sudden death ,Article ,Predictive Value of Tests ,medicine ,Animals ,Genetic Predisposition to Disease ,Genetic Testing ,Model organism ,Zebrafish ,Genetic testing ,Gene knockdown ,Mutation ,Polymorphism, Genetic ,biology ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,ved/biology ,Heart ,Zebrafish Proteins ,biology.organism_classification ,medicine.disease ,Ether-A-Go-Go Potassium Channels ,High-Throughput Screening Assays ,Disease Models, Animal ,Long QT Syndrome ,Gene Knockdown Techniques ,Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine ,Algorithms - Abstract
Rationale: Genetic testing for Long QT Syndrome is now a standard and integral component of clinical cardiology. A major obstacle to the interpretation of genetic findings is the lack of robust functional assays to determine the pathogenicity of identified gene variants in a high-throughput manner. Objective: The goal of this study was to design and test a high-throughput in vivo cardiac assay to distinguish between disease-causing and benign KCNH2 ( hERG1) variants, using the zebrafish as a model organism. Methods and Results: We tested the ability of previously characterized Long QT Syndrome hERG1 mutations and polymorphisms to restore normal repolarization in the kcnh2 -knockdown embryonic zebrafish. The cardiac assay correctly identified a benign variant in 9 of 10 cases (negative predictive value 90%), whereas correctly identifying a disease-causing variant in 39/39 cases (positive predictive value 100%). Conclusions: The in vivo zebrafish cardiac assay approaches the accuracy of the current benchmark in vitro assay for the detection of disease-causing mutations, and is far superior in terms of throughput rate. Together with emerging algorithms for interpreting a positive long QT syndrome genetic test, the zebrafish cardiac assay provides an additional tool for the final determination of pathogenicity of gene variants identified in long QT syndrome genetic screening.
- Published
- 2013