Mutational screening of EFNA5 in Chinese age-related cataract patients.

BACKGROUND/AIM: In the past few years, Ephrin-A5 (EFNA5) had been identified to be associated with lens development, but so far no sequence variation in EFNA5 has been reported in humans. Therefore, we conduct this study to investigate the EFNA5 genetic variations in Chinese age-related cataract (ARC) patients.

METHODS

Sequencing of EFNA5 was performed in 140 sporadic ARC patients and 142 random unrelated healthy subjects. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes. All exons of EFNA5 were sequenced after being amplified by polymerase chain reaction. The functional consequences of the variations were analyzed using PolyPhen2.

RESULTS

Three single nucleotide polymorphisms in EFNA5, c.668C>T (rs201008479), c.102C>T (rs199980747) and c.-27C>G (rs200187971), were found in the patients, and none of them presented in the normal controls. Using PolyPhen2, c.668C>T in EFNA5 is predicted to be possibly damaging.

CONCLUSIONS

The genetic variations c.668C>T (rs201008479), c.102C>T (rs199980747) and c.-27C>G (rs200187971) may present an additional genetic risk factor for ARC in the Chinese population. This study shows the first cases of these genetic variations in EFNA5 in human beings.