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A structural variant in the 5'-flanking region of the TWIST2 gene affects melanocyte development in belted cattle
ISSN
1932-6203
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Mishra, Nivedita Awasthi
Droegemueller, Cord
Jagannathan, Vidhya
Keller, Irene
Wuthrich, Daniel
Bruggmann, Remy
Beck, Julia
Demmel, Steffi
Moser, Simon
Signer-Hasler, Heidi
Pienkowska-Schelling, Aldona
Schelling, Claude
Sande, Marcos
Rongen, Ronald
Rieder, Stefan
Kelsh, Robert N.
Mercader, Nadia
Leeb, Tosso
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0180170
Abstract
Belted cattle have a circular belt of unpigmented hair and skin around their midsection. The belt is inherited as a monogenic autosomal dominant trait. We mapped the causative variant to a 37 kb segment on bovine chromosome 3. Whole genome sequence data of 2 belted and 130 control cattle yielded only one private genetic variant in the critical interval in the two belted animals. The belt-associated variant was a copy number variant (CNV) involving the quadruplication of a 6 kb non-coding sequence located approximately 16 kb upstream of the TWIST2 gene. Increased copy numbers at this CNV were strongly associated with the belt phenotype in a cohort of 333 cases and 1322 controls. We hypothesized that the CNV causes aberrant expression of TWIST2 during neural crest development, which might negatively affect melanoblasts. Functional studies showed that ectopic expression of bovine TWIST2 in neural crest in transgenic zebrafish led to a decrease in melanocyte numbers. Our results thus implicate an unsuspected involvement of TWIST2 in regulating pigmentation and reveal a non-coding CNV underlying a captivating Mendelian character.
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