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Whole-transcriptome sequencing–based concomitant detection of viral and human genetic determinants of cutaneous lesions
Amir Hossein Saeidian, … , Jouni Uitto, Hassan Vahidnezhad
Amir Hossein Saeidian, … , Jouni Uitto, Hassan Vahidnezhad
Published March 22, 2022
Citation Information: JCI Insight. 2022;7(8):e156021. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.156021.
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Resource and Technical Advance Genetics Infectious disease

Whole-transcriptome sequencing–based concomitant detection of viral and human genetic determinants of cutaneous lesions

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Abstract

Severe viral infections of the skin can occur in patients with inborn errors of immunity (IEI). We report an all-in-one whole-transcriptome sequencing–based method by RNA-Seq on a single skin biopsy for concomitantly identifying the cutaneous virome and the underlying IEI. Skin biopsies were obtained from healthy and lesional skin from patients with cutaneous infections suspected to be of viral origin. RNA-Seq was utilized as the first-tier strategy for unbiased human genome-wide rare variant detection. Reads unaligned to the human genome were utilized for the exploration of 926 viruses in a viral genome catalog. In 9 families studied, the patients carried pathogenic variants in 6 human IEI genes, including IL2RG, WAS, CIB1, STK4, GATA2, and DOCK8. Gene expression profiling also confirmed pathogenicity of the human variants and permitted genome-wide homozygosity mapping, which assisted in identification of candidate genes in consanguineous families. This automated, online, all-in-one computational pipeline, called VirPy, enables simultaneous detection of the viral triggers and the human genetic variants underlying skin lesions in patients with suspected IEI and viral dermatosis.

Authors

Amir Hossein Saeidian, Leila Youssefian, Charles Y. Huang, Fahimeh Palizban, Mahtab Naji, Zahra Saffarian, Hamidreza Mahmoudi, Azadeh Goodarzi, Soheila Sotoudeh, Fatemeh Vahidnezhad, Maliheh Amani, Narjes Tavakoli, Ali Ajami, Samaneh Mozafarpoor, Mehrdad Teimoorian, Saeed Dorgaleleh, Sima Shokri, Mohammad Shenagari, Nima Abedi, Sirous Zeinali, Paolo Fortina, Vivien Béziat, Emmanuelle Jouanguy, Jean-Laurent Casanova, Jouni Uitto, Hassan Vahidnezhad

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Figure 9

Family pedigree, clinical features, cutaneous histopathology, and HPV typing in the affected sibling in family 5 with STK4 mutations.

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Family pedigree, clinical features, cutaneous histopathology, and HPV ty...
(A) Anogenital and acral warts in patient IV-5 of family 5. (B) Histopathology of anogenital warts in patient IV-5 revealed hyperkeratosis and presence of koilocytes. (C) Variant calling using RNA-Seq data followed by bioinformatics filtering identified STK4 as the candidate gene. (D) Virome study of genital warts in patient IV-5 (patient 6) detected HPV6. (E) Sanger sequencing of cDNA (left panel) and genomic DNA (right panel) confirmed the presence of the homozygous mutation in STK4 and the absence of exon 7 in cDNA. (F) Heatmap-based expression profiling showed significantly reduced STK4 mRNA levels compared with randomly selected housekeeping genes, indicating nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. The figure was generated in BioRender. gDNA, genomic DNA.

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