Tim Ahmels

Tim Ahmels


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

6Years (2021-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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20 August 2021 in Genes
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
FSFei Song
Fei Song
MOMarta Owczarek-Lipska
Marta Owczarek-Lipska
TATim Ahmels
Tim Ahmels
MBMarius Book
Marius Book
SASabine Aisenbrey
Sabine Aisenbrey
JNJohn Neidhardt
John Neidhardt
Retinal dystrophies (RD) are clinically and genetically heterogenous disorders showing mutations in over 270 disease-associated genes. Several millions of people worldwide are affected with different types of RD. Studying the relevance of disease-associated sequence alterations will assist in understanding disorders and may lead to the development of therapeutic approaches. Here, we established a whole exome sequencing (WES) pipeline to rapidly identify disease-associated mutations in patients. Sanger sequencing was applied to identify deep-intronic variants and to verify the co-segregation of WES results within families. We analyzed 26 unrelated patients with different syndromic and non-syndromic clinical manifestations of RD. All patients underwent ophthalmic examinations. We identified nine novel disease-associated sequence variants among 37 variants identified in total. The sequence variants located to 17 different genes. Interestingly, two cases presenting with Stargardt disease carried deep-intronic variants in ABCA4. We have classified 21 variants as pathogenic variants, 4 as benign/likely benign variants, and 12 as variants of uncertain significance. This study highlights the importance of WES-based mutation analyses in RD patients supporting clinical decisions, broadly based genetic diagnosis and support genetic counselling. It is essential for any genetic therapy to expand the mutation spectrum, understand the genes’ function, and correlate phenotypes with genotypes.