Abstract

Contrary to the common belief, the most commonly used laboratory mouse inbred strains are shaped by a distinctive genetic and phenotypic diversity. In the past 10 years next generation sequencing unveiled a wide spectrum of genetic variants in different mouse inbred strains and the meticulous observation of researchers pointed to a variegate intra-and inter-strain phenotypic diversity. Although a genotype-phenotype correlation has been described for some traits, the relationship between several endophenotypes and causative genetic variability remains still unknown. Recently, we characterized the brain collateral plasticity in two brain ischemia C57BL/6J mouse models (i.e bilateral common carotid artery stenosis [BCCAS] and 60-min transient unilateral middle cerebral artery occlusion [MCAO]) and observed a Mendelian-like fashion of inheritance of the posterior communicating artery (PcomA) plasticity. Interestingly, a copy number variant (CNV) spanning Ide locus was reported to segregate in an analogous Mendelian-like pattern in the C57BL/6J colonies of the Jackson Laboratory. Given the critical role of Ide in vascular plasticity, Ide CNV was an excellent candidate to explain PcomA variability in C57BL/6J inbred mice. To investigate this hypothesis, we applied a combination of complementary techniques (i.e T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], time of flight [TOF] angiography [MRA], cerebral blood flow [CBF] imaging and histology) to characterize the collaterome in C57BL/6J BCCAS and MCAO mice and performed on these Taqman genotyping, exome sequencing, and RNA sequencing. We report an Ide CNV in a BCCAS mouse with 2 patent PcomAs. We then investigated the hypothesis that IDE gain and loss of function mutations may have influenced the vascular phenotype in a cohort of 438,250 cases and controls (UK Biobank) and 15,790 neurological patients (Genomics England), respectively. We identified four IDE CNVs resulting in a loss of function (LoF) in one patient with hereditary ataxia, a patient with hereditary congenital heart disease and two healthy individuals. In addition, we report four IDE LoF point mutations (p.Leu5X, p.Met394ValfsX29, p.Pro14SerfsX26, p.Leu889X) present in controls or inherited from healthy parents. Ide CNV and LoF variants do not crucially influence PcomA variability in C57BL/6J inbred mice and do not cause a vascular phenotype in humans.