Sudandiradoss C

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) play a major role in the understanding of the genetic basis of many complex human diseases. It is still a major challenge to identify the functional SNPs in disease-related genes. In this review, the genetic variation that can alter the expression and the function of the genes, namely KCNQ1, KCNH2, SCN5A, KCNE1 and KCNE2, with the potential role for the development of congenital long QT syndrome (LQTS) was analyzed. Of the total of 3,309 SNPs in all five genes, 27 non-synonymous SNPs (nsSNPs) in the coding region and 44 SNPs in the 5' and 3' un-translated regions (UTR) were identified as functionally significant. SIFT and PolyPhen programs were used to analyze the nsSNPs and FastSNP; UTR scan programs were used to compute SNPs in the 5' and 3' untranslated regions. Of the five selected genes, KCNQ1 has the highest number of 26 haplotype blocks and 6 tag SNPs with a complete linkage disequilibrium value. The gene SCN5A has ten haplotype blocks and four tag SNPs. Both KCNE1 and KCNE2 genes have only one haplotype block and four tag SNPs. Four haplotype blocks and two tag SNPs were obtained for KCNH2 gene. Also, this review reports the copy number variations (CNVs), expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and genome survey sequences (GSS) of the selected genes. These computational methods are in good agreement with experimental works reported earlier concerning LQTS.

Understanding the functions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can greatly help to understand the genetics of the human phenotype variation and especially the genetic basis of human complex diseases. However, how to identify functional SNPs from a pool containing both functional and neutral SNPs is challenging. In this study, we analyzed the genetic variations that can alter the expression and function of a group of cytokine proteins using computational tools. As a result, we extracted 4552 SNPs from 45 cytokine proteins from SNPper database. Of particular interest, 828 SNPs were in the 5'UTR region, 961 SNPs were in the 3' UTR region, and 85 SNPs were non-synonymous SNPs (nsSNPs), which cause amino acid change. Evolutionary conservation analysis using the SIFT tool suggested that 8 nsSNPs may disrupt the protein function. Protein structure analysis using the PolyPhen tool suggested that 5 nsSNPs might alter protein structure. Binding motif analysis using the UTResource tool suggested that 27 SNPs in 5' or 3'UTR might change protein expression levels. Our study demonstrates the presence of naturally occurring genetic variations in the cytokine proteins that may affect their expressions and functions with possible roles in complex human disease, such as immune diseases.