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PB Floyd, PG Gallagher, LA Valentino, M Davis, SL Marchesi and BG Forget
Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New
Haven, CT 06510.
Hereditary pyropoikilocytosis (HPP) and hereditary elliptocytosis are
closely related, congenital disorders of the red blood cell usually
associated with defective spectrin self-association and abnormal limited
tryptic digestion of the N-terminal of domain of spectrin. Enhanced
cleavage by trypsin of spectrin from affected individuals at arginyl
residue 45* and lysyl residue 48* frequently yields increased amounts of an
alpha 1/74-Kd fragment at the expense of the normal alpha 1/80-Kd parent
fragment. Limited tryptic digestion of three unrelated individuals with HPP
showed the alpha 1/74 defect. To ascertain the molecular defect responsible
for the abnormality, the structure of exon 2 of the alpha-spectrin gene was
examined. Genomic DNA from the subjects was amplified by the polymerase
chain reaction using primers flanking exon 2. Restriction endonuclease
digestion of amplified products showed the loss of the HindIII site at
codons 47 and 48 in one allele of subject 1 and abolished the AhaII site at
codons 27 and 28 in one allele of subjects 2 and 3. Nucleotide sequence
analysis of subcloned amplified DNA from the HPP subjects showed three
novel amino acid substitutions. In subject 1 (a black individual), a single
base substitution (AAG----AGG) at codon position 48 changes amino acid
residue lysine to arginine. In subject 2 (a white individual), a single
base substitution (CGT----AGT) at codon 28 changes arginine to serine. In
subject 3 (a black individual), a different base substitution at position
28 (CGT----CTT) changes arginine to leucine. These mutations occur at
positions of the alpha l domain where other mutations have also been
described, indicating that the normal residues at these positions play an
important role in spectrin dimer self-association and thus, in membrane
stability.
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