Assessment of coding region variants in Kuwaiti population: implications for medical genetics and population genomics

Consanguineous populations of the Arabian Peninsula have been underrepresented in global efforts that catalogue human exome variability. We sequenced 291 whole exomes of unrelated, healthy native Arab individuals from Kuwait to a median coverage of 45X and characterised 170,508 single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), of which 21.7% were ‘personal’. Up to 12% of the SNVs were novel and 36% were population-specific. Half of the SNVs were rare and 54% were missense variants. The study complemented the Greater Middle East Variome by way of reporting many additional Arabian exome variants. The study corroborated Kuwaiti population genetic substructures previously derived using genome-wide genotype data and illustrated the genetic relatedness among Kuwaiti population subgroups, Middle Eastern, European and Ashkenazi Jewish populations. The study mapped 112 rare and frequent functional variants relating to pharmacogenomics and disorders (recessive and common) to the phenotypic characteristics of Arab population. Comparative allele frequency data and carrier distributions of known Arab mutations for 23 disorders seen among Arabs, of putative OMIM-listed causal mutations for 12 disorders observed among Arabs but not yet characterized for genetic basis in Arabs, and of 17 additional putative mutations for disorders characterized for genetic basis in Arab populations are presented for testing in future Arab studies.