A hexanucleotide repeat expansion in C9ORF72 was recently found to cause some cases of frontotemporal lobar degeneration, frontotemporal dementia (FTD)-amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration with the C9ORF72 repeat expansion are more likely than those without to present with psychosis. In this study, we screened DNA samples from 192 unrelated subjects with schizophrenia for the C9ORF72 repeat expansion. None of the subjects with schizophrenia had the pathogenic expansion. C9ORF72 repeat expansions either do not cause schizophrenia, or do so rarely (less than 1% of cases).
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2012.08.011 | DOI Listing |
Alzheimers Dement
December 2024
UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Background: Efforts to genetically reverse C9orf72 pathology have been hampered by our incomplete understanding of the regulation of this complex locus.
Method: We generated five different genomic excisions at the C9orf72 locus in a patient-derived iPSC line and a WT line (11 total isogenic lines), and examined gene expression and pathological hallmarks of C9 FTD/ALS in motor neurons differentiated from these lines. Comparing the excisions in these isogenic series removed the confounding effects of different genomic backgrounds and allowed us to probe the effects of specific genomic changes.
The most common genetic cause of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an intronic GC repeat expansion in C9orf72. The repeats undergo bidirectional transcription to produce sense and antisense repeat RNA species, which are translated into dipeptide repeat proteins (DPRs). As toxicity has been associated with both sense and antisense repeat-derived RNA and DPRs, targeting both strands may provide the most effective therapeutic strategy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Department of Bioengineering, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
An abnormal expansion of a GGGGCC (GC) hexanucleotide repeat in the C9ORF72 gene is the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), two debilitating neurodegenerative disorders driven in part by gain-of-function mechanisms involving transcribed forms of the repeat expansion. By utilizing a Cas13 variant with reduced collateral effects, we develop here a high-fidelity RNA-targeting CRISPR-based system for C9ORF72-linked ALS/FTD. When delivered to the brain of a transgenic rodent model, this Cas13-based platform curbed the expression of the GC repeat-containing RNA without affecting normal C9ORF72 levels, which in turn decreased the formation of RNA foci, reduced the production of a dipeptide repeat protein, and reversed transcriptional deficits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The neurodegenerative disorder Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) can be caused by a repeat expansion (GGGGCC; G4C2) in C9orf72. The function of wild-type C9orf72 and the mechanism by which the C9orf72-G4C2 mutation causes FTD, however, remain unresolved. Diverse disease models including human brain samples and differentiated neurons from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) identified some hallmarks associated with FTD, but these models have limitations, including biopsies capturing only a static snapshot of dynamic processes and differentiated neurons being labor-intensive, costly, and post-mitotic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommun Biol
January 2025
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Arginine-rich dipeptide repeat proteins (R-DPRs) are highly toxic proteins found in patients with C9orf72-linked amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia (C9-ALS/FTD). R-DPRs can cause toxicity by disrupting the natural phase behavior of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). Mitigating this abnormal phase behavior is, therefore, crucial to reduce R-DPR-induced toxicity.
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