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Studies of allelic variation underlying genetic blood disorders have provided important insights into human hematopoiesis. Most often, the identified pathogenic mutations result in loss-of-function or missense changes. However, assessing the pathogenicity of noncoding variants can be challenging. Here, we characterize two unrelated patients with a distinct presentation of dyserythropoietic anemia and other impairments in hematopoiesis associated with an intronic mutation in GATA1 that is 24 nucleotides upstream of the canonical splice acceptor site. Functional studies demonstrate that this single-nucleotide alteration leads to reduced canonical splicing and increased use of an alternative splice acceptor site that causes a partial intron retention event. The resultant altered GATA1 contains a five-amino acid insertion at the C-terminus of the C-terminal zinc finger and has no observable activity. Collectively, our results demonstrate how altered splicing of GATA1, which reduces levels of the normal form of this master transcription factor, can result in distinct changes in human hematopoiesis.

Original publication

DOI

10.1084/jem.20181625

Type

Journal article

Journal

J Exp Med

Publication Date

06/05/2019

Volume

216

Pages

1050 - 1060

Keywords

Adult, Alternative Splicing, Anemia, Dyserythropoietic, Congenital, Child, Exons, GATA1 Transcription Factor, HEK293 Cells, Hematopoiesis, Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Humans, Introns, Male, Mutation, Missense, Myelodysplastic Syndromes, RNA Splice Sites, Transcription, Genetic, Transfection