Transcriptome Profiling of patients with 16p11.2 rearrangements

The 600kb BP4-BP5 16p11.2 CNV (copy number variant) is associated with neuroanatomical, neurocognitive and metabolic disorders. These recurrent rearrangements are associated with reciprocal phenotypes such as obesity and underweight, macro- and microcephaly, as well as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia. Here we interrogated the transcriptome of individuals carrying reciprocal CNVs in 16p11.2. The genome-wide transcript perturbations correlated with clinical endophenotypes of the CNV and were enriched for genes associated with ASD. We uncovered a significant correlation between copy number changes and expression levels of genes mutated in ciliopathies. Transcriptome profiles of lymphoblastoid cell lines of 50 16p11.2 deletion carriers, 31 16p11.2 duplication carriers and 17 controls.