TY  - JOUR
A1  - Deppisch, Peter
A1  - Helfrich-Förster, Charlotte
A1  - Senthilan, Pingkalai R.
T1  - The gain and loss of cryptochrome/photolyase family members during evolution
JF  - Genes
N2  - The cryptochrome/photolyase (CRY/PL) family represents an ancient group of proteins fulfilling two fundamental functions. While photolyases repair UV-induced DNA damages, cryptochromes mainly influence the circadian clock. In this study, we took advantage of the large number of already sequenced and annotated genes available in databases and systematically searched for the protein sequences of CRY/PL family members in all taxonomic groups primarily focusing on metazoans and limiting the number of species per taxonomic order to five. Using BLASTP searches and subsequent phylogenetic tree and motif analyses, we identified five distinct photolyases (CPDI, CPDII, CPDIII, 6-4 photolyase, and the plant photolyase PPL) and six cryptochrome subfamilies (DASH-CRY, mammalian-type MCRY, Drosophila-type DCRY, cnidarian-specific ACRY, plant-specific PCRY, and the putative magnetoreceptor CRY4. Manually assigning the CRY/PL subfamilies to the species studied, we have noted that over evolutionary history, an initial increase of various CRY/PL subfamilies was followed by a decrease and specialization. Thus, in more primitive organisms (e.g., bacteria, archaea, simple eukaryotes, and in basal metazoans), we find relatively few CRY/PL members. As species become more evolved (e.g., cnidarians, mollusks, echinoderms, etc.), the CRY/PL repertoire also increases, whereas it appears to decrease again in more recent organisms (humans, fruit flies, etc.). Moreover, our study indicates that all cryptochromes, although largely active in the circadian clock, arose independently from different photolyases, explaining their different modes of action.
KW  - cryptochrome
KW  - photolyase
KW  - cryptochrome/photolyase family
KW  - CPF
KW  - CRY evolution
KW  - circadian clock
KW  - DNA-repair
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312873
VL  - 13
IS  - 9
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sepahi, Ilnaz
A1  - Faust, Ulrike
A1  - Sturm, Marc
A1  - Bosse, Kristin
A1  - Kehrer, Martin
A1  - Heinrich, Tilman
A1  - Grundman-Hauser, Kathrin
A1  - Bauer, Peter
A1  - Ossowski, Stephan
A1  - Susak, Hana
A1  - Varon, Raymonda
A1  - Schröck, Evelin
A1  - Niederacher, Dieter
A1  - Auber, Bernd
A1  - Sutter, Christian
A1  - Arnold, Norbert
A1  - Hahnen, Eric
A1  - Dworniczak, Bernd
A1  - Wang-Gorke, Shan
A1  - Gehrig, Andrea
A1  - Weber, Bernhard H. F.
A1  - Engel, Christoph
A1  - Lemke, Johannes R.
A1  - Hartkopf, Andreas
A1  - Huu Phuc, Nguyen
A1  - Riess, Olaf
A1  - Schroeder, Christopher
T1  - Investigating the effects of additional truncating variants in DNA-repair genes on breast cancer risk in BRCA1-positive women
JF  - BMC Cancer
N2  - Background
Inherited pathogenic variants in BRCA1 and BRCA2 are the most common causes of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC). The risk of developing breast cancer by age 80 in women carrying a BRCA1 pathogenic variant is 72%. The lifetime risk varies between families and even within affected individuals of the same family. The cause of this variability is largely unknown, but it is hypothesized that additional genetic factors contribute to differences in age at onset (AAO). Here we investigated whether truncating and rare missense variants in genes of different DNA-repair pathways contribute to this phenomenon.

Methods
We used extreme phenotype sampling to recruit 133 BRCA1-positive patients with either early breast cancer onset, below 35 (early AAO cohort) or cancer-free by age 60 (controls). Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) was used to screen for variants in 311 genes involved in different DNA-repair pathways.

Results
Patients with an early AAO (73 women) had developed breast cancer at a median age of 27 years (interquartile range (IQR); 25.00–27.00 years). A total of 3703 variants were detected in all patients and 43 of those (1.2%) were truncating variants. The truncating variants were found in 26 women of the early AAO group (35.6%; 95%-CI 24.7 - 47.7%) compared to 16 women of controls (26.7%; 95%-CI 16.1 to 39.7%). When adjusted for environmental factors and family history, the odds ratio indicated an increased breast cancer risk for those carrying an additional truncating DNA-repair variant to BRCA1 mutation (OR: 3.1; 95%-CI 0.92 to 11.5; p-value = 0.07), although it did not reach the conventionally acceptable significance level of 0.05.

Conclusions
To our knowledge this is the first time that the combined effect of truncating variants in DNA-repair genes on AAO in patients with hereditary breast cancer is investigated. Our results indicate that co-occurring truncating variants might be associated with an earlier onset of breast cancer in BRCA1-positive patients. Larger cohorts are needed to confirm these results.
KW  - breast cancer
KW  - age at onset
KW  - DNA-repair genes
KW  - next-generation-sequencing
KW  - panel sequencing
KW  - extreme phenotypes
KW  - hereditary breast and ovarian cancer
KW  - BRCA1
KW  - DNA-repair
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-237676
VL  - 19
ER  -