1. Academic Validation
  2. Recurrent mutations in the U2AF1 splicing factor in myelodysplastic syndromes

Recurrent mutations in the U2AF1 splicing factor in myelodysplastic syndromes

  • Nat Genet. 2011 Dec 11;44(1):53-7. doi: 10.1038/ng.1031.
Timothy A Graubert 1 Dong Shen Li Ding Theresa Okeyo-Owuor Cara L Lunn Jin Shao Kilannin Krysiak Christopher C Harris Daniel C Koboldt David E Larson Michael D McLellan David J Dooling Rachel M Abbott Robert S Fulton Heather Schmidt Joelle Kalicki-Veizer Michelle O'Laughlin Marcus Grillot Jack Baty Sharon Heath John L Frater Talat Nasim Daniel C Link Michael H Tomasson Peter Westervelt John F DiPersio Elaine R Mardis Timothy J Ley Richard K Wilson Matthew J Walter
Affiliations

Affiliation

  • 1 Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Oncology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Abstract

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are hematopoietic stem cell disorders that often progress to chemotherapy-resistant secondary acute myeloid leukemia (sAML). We used whole-genome Sequencing to perform an unbiased comprehensive screen to discover the somatic mutations in a sample from an individual with sAML and genotyped the loci containing these mutations in the matched MDS sample. Here we show that a missense mutation affecting the serine at codon 34 (Ser34) in U2AF1 was recurrently present in 13 out of 150 (8.7%) subjects with de novo MDS, and we found suggestive evidence of an increased risk of progression to sAML associated with this mutation. U2AF1 is a U2 auxiliary factor protein that recognizes the AG splice acceptor dinucleotide at the 3' end of introns, and the alterations in U2AF1 are located in highly conserved zinc fingers of this protein. Mutant U2AF1 promotes enhanced splicing and exon skipping in reporter assays in vitro. This previously unidentified, recurrent mutation in U2AF1 implicates altered pre-mRNA splicing as a potential mechanism for MDS pathogenesis.

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