Barth syndrome: TAZ gene mutations, mRNAs, and evolution.

ABSTRACT

Barth syndrome (MIM 302060) is an X-linked condition that includes dilated cardiomyopathy, neutropenia, failure to thrive, abnormal mitochondria, and 3-methylglutaconic aciduria. The mutated gene, TAZ, first described in 1996, appeared to produce a large set of alternatively spliced mRNAs with initiations of transcription upstream of exons 1 and 3. Since then, disease-causing mutations have been found in all exons including, most recently, a missense mutation in the controversial exon 5. Because of the initially described second initiation of transcription in intron 2, with in-frame initiation of translation in exon 3, we hypothesized that subjects with mutations in exons 1 and 2 would produce more normal "short product" that might attenuate their phenotype. Moreover, it was of interest to determine which splice variants were potentially functional as exon 5 is not present in yeast and rodents, and the variant lacking this exon is the most abundant. Using RT-PCR, we characterized TAZ mRNAs in cultured lymphocytes from nine subjects with Barth syndrome and two healthy controls. The TAZ genes and mRNAs of primates were also included. We found the following (1) there is only one site for initiation of transcription, and the normal alternatively spliced assortment is limited to full-length, delta5, delta7, delta5delta7; (2) there are two alternative splice sites within introns 1 and 2 that could potentially produce an in-frame product; (3) exon 5 evolved into "exonhood" in the primate lineage after the split between Old World monkeys and hominoid primates; and (4) our results suggest that only two functional protein variants exist in lymphocytes delta5 and full-length. Although exon 5 does not appear to be required for TAZ function in yeast and monkeys, its evolution to a highly conserved spliced exon in hominoid primates and the recent finding of an exon 5 mutation in a patient with Barth syndrome suggest that the full-length variant is important to TAZ function.