The murine mutation jaundiced is caused by replacement of an arginine with a stop codon in the mRNA encoding the ninth repeat of beta-spectrin.

ABSTRACT

The jaundiced, ja/ja, mouse mutant has a severe hemolytic anemia associated with a deficiency of beta-spectrin in erythrocyte ghosts. Genes for the disease phenotype and beta-spectrin colocalize on Chromosome 12. beta-Spectrin mRNA is not detected in reticulocytes or in brain from newborn mutant mice. To locate the nucleotide sequence alteration, the erythroid beta-spectrin transcript from mutant spleen was amplified by reverse transcription PCR and sequenced. A C-to-T alteration is present in the mutant transcript and produces a premature stop codon from an arginine codon in mRNA encoding repeat 9 of beta-spectrin at amino acid position 1160. The point mutation introduces a Dde I site that is present in PCR-amplified DNA of ja/ja and ja/+ mice but not of +/+ control mice from the strain of origin, 129/Sv, or from the two strains, WB/Re and C57BL/6J, in which the mutation has been fixed by over 53 generations of backcrossing. The genetic data confirm that the point mutation is responsible for the severe reductions in beta-spectrin mRNA of jaundiced mice.