Neurogenetic Diseases

Nucleotide repeats emerge as one of the most prolific classes of genetic variations. They have the propensity to in-crease in length across generations, and have been implicated in at least 65 known neurological/ neurodevelop-mental and neuromuscular conditions. Simultaneous analysis of all these nucleotide repeats is now possible through the cutting-edge methodologies recently developed that are the long-read sequencing and the optical genome mapping. Investigator propose to test these methodologies in patients carrying expansions in those repeats and to determine the capacity of these technics to detect novel repeats in patients with no genetic diagnosis yet.

Many neurological disorders show a strong genetic basis, from hereditary diseases caused by a single mutation in a given gene, to diseases caused by combinations of strong genetic risk factors. However, even after the sequencing of the appropriate genes, a large proportion of patients remains undiagnosed, either because there is no candidate mutation observed, or in case of identification of a candidate mutation with insufficient knowledge to consider it as pathogenic or not. The aim of this project is to identify the cause of neurogenetic diseases in patients in situations of diagnostic wandering or dead ends by proposing the analysis of RNA and/or proteins from different tissues.