The psychiatric risk gene transcription factor 4 (TCF4) regulates neurodevelopmental pathways associated with schizophrenia, autism, and intellectual disability

Forrest, Marc P., Hill, Matthew J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6776-8709, Kavanagh, David H., Tansey, Katherine E., Waite, Adrian J. and Blake, Derek J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5005-4731 2018. The psychiatric risk gene transcription factor 4 (TCF4) regulates neurodevelopmental pathways associated with schizophrenia, autism, and intellectual disability. Schizophrenia Bulletin 44 (5) , pp. 1100-1110. 10.1093/schbul/sbx164

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Abstract

Background Common genetic variants in and around the gene encoding transcription factor 4 (TCF4) are associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. Conversely, rare damaging TCF4 mutations cause Pitt–Hopkins syndrome and have also been found in individuals with intellectual disability (ID) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods Chromatin immunoprecipitation and next generation sequencing were used to identify the genomic targets of TCF4. These data were integrated with expression, epigenetic and disease gene sets using a range of computational tools. Results We identify 10604 TCF4 binding sites in the genome that were assigned to 5437 genes. De novo motif enrichment found that most TCF4 binding sites contained at least one E-box (5′-CAtcTG). Approximately 77% of TCF4 binding sites overlapped with the H3K27ac histone modification for active enhancers. Enrichment analysis on the set of TCF4 targets identified numerous, highly significant functional clusters for pathways including nervous system development, ion transport and signal transduction, and co-expression modules for genes associated with synaptic function and brain development. Importantly, we found that genes harboring de novo mutations in schizophrenia (P = 5.3 × 10−7), ASD (P = 2.5 × 10−4), and ID (P = 7.6 × 10−3) were also enriched among TCF4 targets. TCF4 binding sites were also found at other schizophrenia risk loci including the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor cluster, CHRNA5/CHRNA3/CHRNB4 and SETD1A. Conclusions These data demonstrate that TCF4 binding sites are found in a large number of neuronal genes that include many genetic risk factors for common neurodevelopmental disorders.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute (NMHRI) Medicine MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG)
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0586-7614
Funders:	Medical Research Council
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 December 2017
Date of Acceptance:	28 October 2017
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2023 18:32
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/107566

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