Targeted high-throughput sequencing identifies pathogenic mutations in KCNQ4 in two large Chinese families with autosomal dominant hearing loss

PLoS One. 2014 Aug 12;9(8):e103133. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0103133. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Autosomal dominant non-syndromic hearing loss (ADNSHL) is highly heterogeneous, among them, KCNQ4 is one of the most frequent disease-causing genes. More than twenty KCNQ4 mutations have been reported, but none of them were detected in Chinese mainland families. In this study, we identified a novel KCNQ4 mutation in a five generation Chinese family with 84 members and a known KCNQ4 mutation in a six generation Chinese family with 66 members. Mutation screening of 30 genes for ADNSHL was performed in the probands from thirty large Chinese families with ADNSHL by targeted region capture and high-throughput sequencing. The candidate variants and the co-segregation of the phenotype were verified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and Sanger sequencing in all ascertained family members. Then we identified a novel KCNQ4 mutation p.W275R in exon 5 and a known KCNQ4 mutation p.G285S in exon 6 in two large Chinese ADNSHL families segregating with post-lingual high frequency-involved and progressive sensorineural hearing loss. This is the first report of KCNQ4 mutation in Chinese mainland families. KCNQ4, a member of voltage-gated potassium channel family, is likely to be a common gene in Chinese patients with ADNSHL. The results also support that the combination of targeted enrichment and high-throughput sequencing is a valuable molecular diagnostic tool for autosomal dominant hereditary deafness.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age of Onset
  • Aged
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Audiometry
  • Child
  • Child, Preschool
  • China
  • DNA Mutational Analysis
  • Female
  • Gene Order
  • Genes, Dominant*
  • Genotype
  • Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / diagnosis
  • Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / genetics*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Humans
  • KCNQ Potassium Channels / genetics*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Mutation*
  • Pedigree
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • KCNQ Potassium Channels
  • KCNQ4 protein, human

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the grants of the National Key Basic Research Program of China, No. 2014CB943001, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Major Project, No. 81120108009. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.