Somatic instability of theFGF14-SCA27B GAA•TTC repeat reveals a marked expansion bias in the cerebellum

Abstract

Spinocerebellar ataxia 27B (SCA27B) is a common autosomal dominant ataxia caused by an intronic GAA•TTC repeat expansion inFGF14. Neuropathological studies have shown that neuronal loss is largely restricted to the cerebellum. Although the repeat locus is highly unstable during intergenerational transmission, it remains unknown whether it exhibits cerebral mosaicism and progressive instability throughout life. We conducted an analysis of theFGF14GAA•TTC repeat somatic instability across 156 serial blood samples from 69 individuals, fibroblasts, induced pluripotent stem cells, and post-mortem brain tissues from six controls and six patients with SCA27B, alongside methylation profiling using targeted long-read sequencing. Peripheral tissues exhibited minimal somatic instability, which did not significantly change over periods of more than 20 years. In post-mortem brains, the GAA•TTC repeat was remarkably stable across all regions, except in the cerebellar hemispheres and vermis. The levels of somatic expansion in the cerebellar hemispheres and vermis were, on average, 3.15 and 2.72 times greater relative to other examined brain regions, respectively. Additionally, levels of somatic expansion in the brain increased with repeat length and tissue expression ofFGF14. We found no significant difference in methylation of wild-type and expandedFGF14alleles in post-mortem cerebellar hemispheres between patients and controls. In conclusion, our study revealed that theFGF14GAA•TTC repeat exhibits a cerebellar-specific expansion bias, which may explain the pure and late-onset cerebellar involvement in SCA27B.