Xiaozhen Song, Fan Yuan, Fang Yuan, Xiaoping Lan, Jia Jia, Wuhen Xu, Xiaojun Tang, Jun Shen, Yucai Chen, Hong Zhang, Guang He, Shengnan Wu
Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis, Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
Bio-X Institute, Key Laboratory for the Genetics of Developmental and Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 May 4;9:633819. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.633819. eCollection 2021.
Progressive myoclonic epilepsy (PME) is a rare neurodegenerative disease, characterized by myoclonic seizures and tonic clonic seizures, with genetical and phenotypical heterogeneity. The semaphorin 6B () gene has been recently reported a causal gene of PME. Independent studies are warranted to further support these findings. Here we report that one nonsense variant in NM_032108.3 exon17 c.2056C > T (p.Gln686) and one missense variant in exon14 c.1483G > T (p.Gly495Trp) of , both occurring , underlie early-onset epilepsy with variable severity and different response to treatment in two patients. analyses have demonstrated that the nonsense variant, p.Gln686, results in a truncated protein with remarkably increased expression compared to that of the wild type. The truncated protein presented more homogeneous and failed to locate in the plasma membrane. The missense variant p.Gly495Trp affects evolutionarily conserved amino acid and is located in the sema domain, a key functional domain of SEMA6B. It was predicted to perturb the SEMA6B function by altering the tertiary structure of mutant protein, although neither change of protein length and expression nor difference of cellular distribution was observed. Co-immunoprecipitation studies have demonstrated that both variants influence protein binding of SEMA6B and PlxnA2 with varying degrees. Our results provide further evidence to support the initial findings of being causal to epilepsy and indicate that mediating Semaphorin/Plexin signaling is the potential mechanism of the SEMA6B-related disease.
进行性肌阵挛癫痫(PME)是一种罕见的神经退行性疾病,其特征为肌阵挛发作和强直阵挛发作,具有遗传和表型异质性。最近有报道称,信号素6B(SEMA6B)基因是PME的致病基因。需要进行独立研究以进一步支持这些发现。在此,我们报告在两名患者中,SEMA6B基因NM_032108.3外显子17的一个无义变体c.2056C>T(p.Gln686)和外显子14的一个错义变体c.1483G>T(p.Gly495Trp)均导致了早发性癫痫,严重程度各异且对治疗的反应不同。功能分析表明,无义变体p.Gln686导致一种截短蛋白,与野生型相比其表达显著增加。截短蛋白表现出更均匀的分布,且未能定位在质膜上。错义变体p.Gly495Trp影响进化上保守的氨基酸,位于SEMA6B的关键功能域——sema结构域中。尽管未观察到蛋白质长度、表达的变化以及细胞分布的差异,但预计该变体会通过改变突变蛋白的三级结构来干扰SEMA6B的功能。免疫共沉淀研究表明,这两种变体均不同程度地影响SEMA6B与PlxnA2的蛋白结合。我们的结果为支持SEMA6B是癫痫致病基因的初步发现提供了进一步证据,并表明介导信号素/丛状蛋白信号传导是SEMA6B相关疾病的潜在机制。