Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Dejanovic, Borislav
• Lal, Dennis
• Catarino, Claudia B
• Arjune, Sita
• Belaidi, Abdel A
• Trucks, Holger
• Vollmar, Christian
• Surges, Rainer
• Kunz, Wolfram S
• Motameny, Susanne
• Altmüller, Janine
• Köhler, Anna
• Neubauer, Bernd A
• EPICURE Consortium
• Nürnberg, Peter
• Noachtar, Soheyl
• Schwarz, Günter
• Sander, Thomas

Titel

Exonic microdeletions of the gephyrin gene impair GABAergic synaptic inhibition in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy

Ist Teil von

• Neurobiology of disease, 2014-07, Vol.67, p.88-96

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Abstract Gephyrin is a postsynaptic scaffolding protein, essential for the clustering of glycine and γ-aminobutyric acid type-A receptors (GABAA Rs) at inhibitory synapses. An impairment of GABAergic synaptic inhibition represents a key pathway of epileptogenesis. Recently, exonic microdeletions in the gephyrin ( GPHN ) gene have been associated with neurodevelopmental disorders including autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia and epileptic seizures. Here we report the identification of novel exonic GPHN microdeletions in two patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE), representing the most common group of genetically determined epilepsies. The identified GPHN microdeletions involve exons 5–9 (Δ5–9) and 2–3 (Δ2–3), both affecting the gephyrin G-domain. Molecular characterization of the GPHN Δ5–9 variant demonstrated that it perturbs the clustering of regular gephyrin at inhibitory synapses in cultured mouse hippocampal neurons in a dominant-negative manner, resulting in a significant loss of γ2 -subunit containing GABAA Rs. GPHN Δ2–3 causes a frameshift resulting in a premature stop codon (p.V22Gfs*7) leading to haplo-insufficiency of the gene. Our results demonstrate that structural exonic microdeletions affecting the GPHN gene constitute a rare genetic risk factor for IGE and other neuropsychiatric disorders by an impairment of the GABAergic inhibitory synaptic transmission.