Importance of searching for associated mitochondrial DNA alterations in patients with multiple deletions

Autor: R. Paul, Jean Pouget, C Butori, A. Saunières, Christian Richelme, Jean-François Pellissier, Véronique Paquis-Flucklinger, M. F. Monfort, Claude Desnuelle
Rok vydání: 2000
Předmět:
Zdroj: European Journal of Human Genetics. 8:331-338
ISSN: 1476-5438
1018-4813
DOI: 10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200463
Popis: Multiple mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions have been reported in patients with autosomal dominant and recessive disorders. We studied several affected and one non-affected individuals belonging to a pedigree in which the inheritance of the pathological trait was compatible with an autosomique dominant transmission. Affected members had late-onset multisystem disorders with multiple mtDNA deletions in skeletal muscle. But this family presented a striking difference from previously described cases, because none of the patients had progressive external ophthalmoplegia (PEO). We also studied one young boy with a no contributary family history. He had a cerebellar ataxia with PEO and multiple mtDNA deletions in muscle. Molecular analysis revealed that in the first family, repeated sequences were present at the breakpoint junctions, whereas such motifs were not found in the young patient's case. In the first family, we evidenced mtDNA point mutations in clones containing breakpoint junctions and a 9-bp motif triplication in the intergenic COII/tRNA(Lys) region, whereas this sequence is repeated twice in the wild type mtDNA. Our results suggest that multiple deletions observed in the two pedigrees result from different molecular mechanisms and point out the role of repeated sequences in the first pedigree. No mtDNA repair system has been described in mammals so far, but the molecular abnormalities found in the first family suggest that a defect in an mtDNA repair system, homologous to the E. coli MutHLS pathway, could be responsible for such a phenotype.
Databáze: OpenAIRE