Nicholas A. Watts

Exploring penetrance of clinically relevant variants in over 800,000 humans from the Genome Aggregation Database

The paper analyzes over 800,000 human genomes to assess penetrance of clinically relevant variants, finding that 95% of pLoF variants in severe diseases have explanations for lack of disease manifestation.

Improved Allele Frequencies in gnomAD through Local Ancestry Inference

This paper improves allele frequency estimates in gnomAD by applying local ancestry inference to admixed populations, revealing significant frequency differences that could affect clinical interpretation.

The landscape of regional missense mutational intolerance quantified from 730,947 exomes

The paper quantifies regional missense mutational intolerance using 730,947 exomes to identify constrained gene regions and improve variant interpretation.

A genome-wide mutational constraint map quantified from variation in 76,156 human genomes

Rare-variant depletion in 1kb windows of 76,156 gnomAD genomes, versus feature-adjusted mutation expectations, marks regulatory elements and outperforms seven alternative scores at flagging functional non-coding variants.

Inferring compound heterozygosity from large-scale exome sequencing data

The paper develops a method to infer compound heterozygosity from exome sequencing data, achieving high accuracy in phasing rare variants for recessive disease diagnosis.

Advanced variant classification framework reduces the false positive rate of predicted loss of function (pLoF) variants in population sequencing data

This paper presents a framework to reduce false positives in predicted loss-of-function variants by analyzing LoF evasion mechanisms and adjusting ACMG/AMP guidelines.

Systematic single-variant and gene-based association testing of thousands of phenotypes in 426,370 UK Biobank exomes

The paper performs single-variant and gene-based association analyses of 4,529 phenotypes using exome data from 426,370 UK Biobank individuals, finding associations linked to variant frequency and deleteriousness.

Exome sequencing identifies rare coding variants in 10 genes which confer substantial risk for schizophrenia

Exomes of 24,248 schizophrenia cases and 97,322 controls implicate ultra-rare damaging variants in 10 genes, including GRIN2A and GRIA3, with odds ratios of 3 to 50.

Mitochondrial DNA variation across 56,434 individuals in gnomAD

The paper presents a pipeline to call mitochondrial DNA variants in gnomAD, reporting population frequencies for 10,850 unique mtDNA variants across 56,434 individuals.

Exome sequencing in bipolar disorder reveals shared risk gene AKAP11 with schizophrenia

The paper reports exome sequencing findings in bipolar disorder, identifying AKAP11 as a shared risk gene with schizophrenia through ultra-rare protein-truncating variants.

Evaluating potential drug targets through human loss-of-function genetic variation

The paper evaluates potential drug targets using loss-of-function genetic variants from gnomAD, highlighting the importance of deep curation and targeted recall studies for drug discovery.

The mutational constraint spectrum quantified from variation in 141,456 humans

From 125,748 exomes and 15,708 genomes, 443,769 high-confidence predicted loss-of-function variants yield LOEUF, a continuous gene intolerance score tracking mouse lethality, cell essentiality, and disease associations.

Transcript expression-aware annotation improves rare variant discovery and interpretation

The paper develops an expression-based annotation metric to improve rare variant interpretation by filtering false-positive loss-of-function variants and identifying pathogenic variants in highly expressed exons.

An open resource of structural variation for medical and population genetics

Short-read genome sequencing of 14,891 diverse genomes yields 433,371 structural variants (SVs) for gnomAD; loss-constrained genes also resist duplication, and clinical SV carrier rates are benchmarked.

Human loss-of-function variants suggest that partial LRRK2 inhibition is a safe therapeutic strategy for Parkinsons disease

The paper analyzes loss-of-function variants in LRRK2 across large genomic datasets to assess the safety of partial LRRK2 inhibition as a Parkinson's disease therapy.

Characterising the loss-of-function impact of 5’ untranslated region variants in 15,708 individuals

The paper systematically studies uORF variants in 15,708 genomes, showing they are under strong negative selection and contribute to disease.

Landscape of multi-nucleotide variants in 125,748 human exomes and 15,708 genomes

The paper analyzes multi-nucleotide variants (MNVs) in 125,748 exomes and 15,708 genomes, identifying their distribution, mutational origins, and functional implications.