Identification of novel FUS mutations in sporadic cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Abstract

Mutations in the FUS gene have been recently associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). While most of the variants have been identified in patients with a family history of the disease, a few mutations were also found in sporadic patients. Considering this, we wanted to evaluate the frequency of mutations in the coding region of the FUS gene in a sporadic ALS (SALS) cohort compared to a control population. We tested 475 SALS cases of European origin and 475 matched controls for coding variations in the 15 exons of the FUS gene. Rare novel variants were identified in a total of five SALS patients: one missense, one deletion, one frameshift, and one nonsense substitution. Two of the four variants are located in the carboxy terminal of the protein where the previously reported variants were mostly clustered. In conclusion, FUS gene mutations are rare in SALS, with four new FUS variants identified in five different SALS cases. These findings will help evaluate the proportion of FUS variations in the SALS population, and to better understand its contributing role to ALS pathology.

Key words::

• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
• genetics
• RNA-binding protein
• FUS

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the patients involved in this study. We also thank Mélanie Benard, Isabelle Thibault and Pierre Provencher for sample collection and organization, Cynthia Bourassa, Najib Nassani and Natalia Abian for technical support, and to acknowledge support from the Association pour la Recherche sur la Sclérose Latérale Amyotrophique (ARS), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, ALS Canada, the Association Française contre les Myopathies (AFM), and the French Group on MND.

Declaration of interest: VVB, HD and GAR are supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. All authors have no actual or potential conflicts of interest.