Frequency and characteristics of the TBK1 gene variants in Japanese patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurological disease, and the etiology of sporadic ALS is generally unknown. The TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) gene was identified as an ALS gene contributing to a predisposition toward ALS. To reveal the frequency and characteristics of variants of the TBK1 gene in sporadic ALS patients in Japan, we analyzed the TBK1 gene by exome sequencing in a large Japanese cohort of 713 sporadic ALS patients and 800 controls. We identified known or potentially toxic rare variants of TBK1 gene in 9 patients (1.26%) with sporadic ALS, including 4 novel missense variants (p.V23I, p.H322R, p.R358C, p.T478I) and 3 loss-of-function variants (p.R357X, p.P378_I379del, p.T419_G420del).

Source: Neurobiology of Aging - December 11, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Genki Tohnai, Ryoichi Nakamura, Jun Sone, Masahiro Nakatochi, Daichi Yokoi, Masahisa Katsuno, Hazuki Watanabe, Hirohisa Watanabe, Mizuki Ito, Yuanzhe Li, Yuishin Izumi, Mitsuya Morita, Akira Taniguchi, Osamu Kano, Masaya Oda, Satoshi Kuwabara, Koji Abe, I Source Type: research