ABSTRACT
Canavan disease is a severe progressive autosomal recessive disorder, which is characterised by spongy degeneration of the brain. The disease is caused by mutations in the aspartoacylase gene. Two different mutations were reported on 98% of the alleles of Ashkenazi Jewish patients, in which population the disease is highly prevalent. In non-Jewish patients of European origin, one mutation (914C > A) is found in 50% of the alleles, the other alleles representing all kinds of different mutations. We here describe the results of the mutation analysis in 17 European, non-Jewish patients. Ten different mutations were found, of which four had not been described before (H21P, A57T, R168H, P181T). A deletion of exon4, which until now had only been described once, was revealed in all five alleles of Turkish origin tested, indicating that this is a founder effect in the Turkish population.
Subject(s)
Amidohydrolases/genetics , Canavan Disease/enzymology , Mutation , Base Sequence , Canavan Disease/genetics , DNA Mutational Analysis , DNA Primers/chemistry , Ethnicity/genetics , Heterozygote , Homozygote , Humans , Jews , Molecular Sequence Data , Pedigree , Polymorphism, Single-Stranded Conformational , Prenatal Diagnosis/methods , Turkey/epidemiologyABSTRACT
In a search for candidate tumor suppressor genes within a 650-kb common region of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at 16q24.3 in breast cancer tissues, a 2.6-kb cDNA, named copine VII (CPNE7), was characterized. The gene is 2654 bp and codes for a 633-residue protein with high homology to the other members of the copine family, such as copine I, copine III, and N-copine. The predicted amino acid sequence contains two copies of a C2 domain in the N-terminus. Since these domains have been found in several membrane-binding proteins involved in different intracellular processes, copine VII was viewed as a potential tumor suppressor gene. Mutation analysis was carried out by single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis of 18 breast tumor tissue samples with ascertained LOH on chromosome 16q24.3. Since only two polymorphisms were identified, no evidence was found to indicate that copine VII is the tumor suppressor gene at 16q24.3 involved in breast cancer.