The genetic architecture of Plakophilin 2 cardiomyopathy

The genetic architecture of Plakophilin 2 (PKP2) cardiomyopathy can inform our understanding of its variant pathogenicity and protein function.

We assess the gene-wide and regional association of truncating and missense variants in PKP2 with arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) specifically. A discovery data set compares genetic testing requisitions to gnomAD. Validation is performed in a rigorously phenotyped definite ARVC cohort and non-ACM individuals in the Geisinger MyCode cohort.

The etiologic fraction (EF) of ACM-related diagnoses from truncating variants in PKP2 is significant (0.85 [0.80,0.88], p < 2 × 10^-16), increases for ARVC specifically (EF = 0.96 [0.94,0.97], p < 2 × 10^-16), and is highest in definite ARVC versus non-ACM individuals (EF = 1.00 [1.00,1.00], p < 2 × 10^-16). Regions of missense variation enriched for ACM probands include known functional domains and the C-terminus, which was not previously known to contain a functional domain. No regional enrichment was identified for truncating variants.

This multicohort evaluation of the genetic architecture of PKP2 demonstrates the specificity of PKP2 truncating variants for ARVC within the ACM disease spectrum. We identify the PKP2 C-terminus as a potential functional domain and find that truncating variants likely cause disease irrespective of transcript position.