1. SEC31A may be associated with pituitary hormone deficiency and gonadal dysgenesis.
- Author
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Tobias ES, Lucas-Herald AK, Sagar D, Montezano AC, Rios FJ, De Lucca Camargo L, Hamilton G, Gazdagh G, Diver LA, Williams N, Herzyk P, Touyz RM, Greenfield A, McGowan R, and Ahmed SF
- Subjects
- Animals, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Humans, Male, Mice, Mice, Knockout, Pedigree, Pituitary Hormones deficiency, Pituitary Hormones genetics, Vesicular Transport Proteins genetics, Gonadal Dysgenesis genetics, Hypopituitarism genetics, Hypopituitarism metabolism
- Abstract
Purpose: Disorders/differences of sex development (DSD) result from variants in many different human genes but, frequently, have no detectable molecular cause., Methods: Detailed clinical and genetic phenotyping was conducted on a family with three children. A Sec31a animal model and functional studies were used to investigate the significance of the findings., Results: By trio whole-exome DNA sequencing we detected a heterozygous de novo nonsense SEC31A variant, in three children of healthy non-consanguineous parents. The children had different combinations of disorders that included complete gonadal dysgenesis and multiple pituitary hormone deficiency. SEC31A encodes a component of the COPII coat protein complex, necessary for intracellular anterograde vesicle-mediated transport between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi. CRISPR-Cas9 targeted knockout of the orthologous Sec31a gene region resulted in early embryonic lethality in homozygous mice. mRNA expression of ER-stress genes ATF4 and CHOP was increased in the children, suggesting defective protein transport. The pLI score of the gene, from gnomAD data, is 0.02., Conclusions: SEC31A might underlie a previously unrecognised clinical syndrome comprising gonadal dysgenesis, multiple pituitary hormone deficiencies, dysmorphic features and developmental delay. However, a variant that remains undetected, in a different gene, may alternatively be causal in this family., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)
- Published
- 2024
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