Refinement of evolutionary medicine predictions based on clinical evidence for the manifestations of Mendelian diseases

Sci Rep. 2019 Dec 9;9(1):18577. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-54976-4.

Abstract

Prediction methods have become an integral part of biomedical and biotechnological research. However, their clinical interpretations are largely based on biochemical or molecular data, but not clinical data. Here, we focus on improving the reliability and clinical applicability of prediction algorithms. We assembled and curated two large non-overlapping large databases of clinical phenotypes. These phenotypes were caused by missense variations in 44 and 63 genes associated with Mendelian diseases. We used these databases to establish and validate the model, allowing us to improve the predictions obtained from EVmutation, SNAP2 and PoPMuSiC 2.1. The predictions of clinical effects suffered from a lack of specificity, which appears to be the common constraint of all recently used prediction methods, although predictions mediated by these methods are associated with nearly absolute sensitivity. We introduced evidence-based tailoring of the default settings of the prediction methods; this tailoring substantially improved the prediction outcomes. Additionally, the comparisons of the clinically observed and theoretical variations led to the identification of large previously unreported pools of variations that were under negative selection during molecular evolution. The evolutionary variation analysis approach described here is the first to enable the highly specific identification of likely disease-causing missense variations that have not yet been associated with any clinical phenotype.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Ectodysplasins / genetics
  • Evolution, Molecular
  • Genetic Diseases, Inborn / genetics*
  • Genetic Variation
  • Genomics
  • Glucosephosphate Dehydrogenase / genetics
  • Hemoglobins / genetics
  • Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 4 / genetics
  • Humans
  • Likelihood Functions
  • Models, Genetic*
  • Mutation*
  • Mutation, Missense
  • Phenotype
  • Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase, Non-Receptor Type 11 / genetics
  • Proteomics

Substances

  • EDA protein, human
  • Ectodysplasins
  • HNF4A protein, human
  • Hemoglobins
  • Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 4
  • hemoglobin B
  • G6PD protein, human
  • Glucosephosphate Dehydrogenase
  • PTPN11 protein, human
  • Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase, Non-Receptor Type 11