Novel mutations in Lrp6 orthologs in mouse and human neural tube defects affect a highly dosage-sensitive Wnt non-canonical planar cell polarity pathway.

Wnt signaling has been classified as canonical Wnt/ß-catenin-dependent or non-canonical planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway. Misregulation of either pathway is linked mainly to cancer or neural tube defects (NTDs), respectively. Both pathways seem to antagonize each other, and recent studies have implicated a number of molecular switches that activate one pathway while simultaneously inhibiting the other thereby partially mediating this antagonism. The lipoprotein receptor-related protein Lrp6 is crucial for the activation of the Wnt/ß-catenin pathway, but its function in Wnt/PCP signaling remains largely unknown. In this study, we investigate the role of Lrp6 as a molecular switch between both Wnt pathways in a novel ENU mouse mutant of Lrp6 (Skax26(m1Jus)) and in human NTDs. We demonstrate that Skax26(m1Jus) represents a hypermorphic allele of Lrp6 with increased Wnt canonical and abolished PCP-induced JNK activities. We also show that Lrp6(Skax26-Jus) genetically interacts with a PCP mutant (Vangl2(Lp)) where double heterozygotes showed an increased frequency of NTDs and defects in cochlear hair cells' polarity. Importantly, our study also demonstrates the association of rare and novel missense mutations in LRP6 that is an inhibitor rather than an activator of the PCP pathway with human NTDs. We show that three LRP6 mutations in NTDs led to a reduced Wnt canonical activity and enhanced PCP signaling. Our data confirm an inhibitory role of Lrp6 in PCP signaling in neurulation and indicate the importance of a tightly regulated and highly dosage-sensitive antagonism between both Wnt pathways in this process.

VANGL1 rare variants associated with neural tube defects affect convergent extension in zebrafish.

In humans, rare non-synonymous variants in the planar cell polarity gene VANGL1 are associated with neural tube defects (NTDs). These variants were hypothesized to be pathogenic based mainly on genetic studies in a large cohort of NTD patients. In this study, we validate the potential pathogenic effect of these mutations in vivo by investigating their effect on convergent extension in zebrafish. Knocking down the expression of tri, the ortholog of Vangl2, using an antisense morpholino (MO), as shown previously, led to a defective convergent extension (CE) manifested by a shortened body axis and widened somites. Co-injection of the human VANGL1 with the tri-MO was able to partially rescue the tri-MO induced phenotype in zebrafish. In contrast, co-injection of two human VANGL1 variants, p.Val239Ile and p.Met328Thr, failed to rescue this phenotype. We next carried out overexpression studies where we measured the ability of the human VANGL1 alleles to induce a CE phenotype when injected at high doses in zebrafish embryos. While overexpressing the wild-type allele led to a severely defective CE, overexpression of either p.Val239Ile or p.Met328Thr variant failed to do so. Results from both tri-MO knockdown/rescue results and overexpression assays suggest that these two variants most likely represent "loss-of-function" alleles that affect protein function during embryonic development. Our study demonstrates a high degree of functional conservation of VANGL genes across evolution and provides a model system for studying potential variants identified in human NTDs.