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Updated: Apr 12, 2026

Targeted Next-generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics Pipeline to Evaluate Genetic Determinants of Constitutional Disease
Published on: April 4, 2018
Human genomics. Effect of predicted protein-truncating genetic variants on the human transcriptome
Manuel A Rivas1, Matti Pirinen2, Donald F Conrad3
1Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. rivas@well.ox.ac.uk tlappalainen@nygenome.org macarthur@atgu.mgh.harvard.edu.
None:
Accurate prediction of the functional effect of genetic variation is critical for clinical genome interpretation. We systematically characterized the transcriptome effects of protein-truncating variants, a class of variants expected to have profound effects on gene function, using data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) and Geuvadis projects. We quantitated tissue-specific and positional effects on nonsense-mediated transcript decay and present an improved predictive model for this decay. We directly measured the effect of variants both proximal and distal to splice junctions. Furthermore, we found that robustness to heterozygous gene inactivation is not due to dosage compensation. Our results illustrate the value of transcriptome data in the functional interpretation of genetic variants.
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