1. Academic Validation
  2. CLP1 founder mutation links tRNA splicing and maturation to cerebellar development and neurodegeneration

CLP1 founder mutation links tRNA splicing and maturation to cerebellar development and neurodegeneration

  • Cell. 2014 Apr 24;157(3):651-63. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2014.03.049.
Ashleigh E Schaffer 1 Veerle R C Eggens 2 Ahmet Okay Caglayan 3 Miriam S Reuter 4 Eric Scott 1 Nicole G Coufal 1 Jennifer L Silhavy 1 Yuanchao Xue 5 Hulya Kayserili 6 Katsuhito Yasuno 3 Rasim Ozgur Rosti 1 Mostafa Abdellateef 1 Caner Caglar 3 Paul R Kasher 2 J Leonie Cazemier 2 Marian A Weterman 2 Vincent Cantagrel 7 Na Cai 1 Christiane Zweier 4 Umut Altunoglu 6 N Bilge Satkin 6 Fesih Aktar 8 Beyhan Tuysuz 9 Cengiz Yalcinkaya 10 Huseyin Caksen 11 Kaya Bilguvar 3 Xiang-Dong Fu 5 Christopher R Trotta 12 Stacey Gabriel 13 André Reis 4 Murat Gunel 3 Frank Baas 2 Joseph G Gleeson 14
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Neurogenetics Laboratory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
  • 2 Department of Genome Analysis, Academic Medical Center, Meibergdreef 9,1105AZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
  • 3 Yale Program on Neurogenetics, Departments of Neurosurgery, Neurobiology, and Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
  • 4 Institute of Human Genetics, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Schwabachanlage 10, Erlangen 91054, Germany.
  • 5 Cellular Molecular Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
  • 6 Medical Genetics Department, Istanbul Medical Faculty, Istanbul University, Millet Caddesi, 34093 Fatih/Istanbul, Turkey.
  • 7 Neurogenetics Laboratory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; Institut IMAGINE, INSERM U1163, Faculté Paris-Descartes, 75015 Paris, France.
  • 8 Department of Pediatrics, Diyarbakir State Hospital, 21100 Diyarbakir, Turkey.
  • 9 Department of Pediatric Genetics, Cerrahpaşa Medical School, Istanbul University, 34098 Istanbul, Turkey.
  • 10 Department of Neurology, Division of Child Neurology, Cerrahpaşa Medical School, Istanbul University, 34098 Istanbul, Turkey.
  • 11 Department of Pediatrics, Meram Medical School, Necmettin Erbakan University, 42080 Konya, Turkey.
  • 12 PTC Therapeutics, South Plainfield, NJ 07080, USA.
  • 13 Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
  • 14 Neurogenetics Laboratory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Electronic address: jogleeson@ucsd.edu.
Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases can occur so early as to affect neurodevelopment. From a cohort of more than 2,000 consanguineous families with childhood Neurological Disease, we identified a founder mutation in four independent pedigrees in cleavage and polyadenylation factor I subunit 1 (CLP1). CLP1 is a multifunctional kinase implicated in tRNA, mRNA, and siRNA maturation. Kinase activity of the CLP1 mutant protein was defective, and the tRNA Endonuclease complex (TSEN) was destabilized, resulting in impaired pre-tRNA cleavage. Germline clp1 null zebrafish showed cerebellar neurodegeneration that was rescued by wild-type, but not mutant, human CLP1 expression. Patient-derived induced neurons displayed both depletion of mature tRNAs and accumulation of unspliced pre-tRNAs. Transfection of partially processed tRNA fragments into patient cells exacerbated an oxidative stress-induced reduction in cell survival. Our data link tRNA maturation to neuronal development and neurodegeneration through defective CLP1 function in humans.

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