Hypofibrinogenemia caused by a nonsense mutation in the fibrinogen Bbeta chain gene

Congenital hypofibrinogenemia, fibrinogen Tottori II, caused by a nonsense mutation in the fibrinogen Bbeta chain gene, was found in a 68-year-old Japanese female. The plasma fibrinogen level was 99.2 mg dL(-1) as determined by the thrombin time method. No overt molecular abnormalities were observed in purified patient fibrinogen by SDS-PAGE analysis. After sequencing all exons and exon-intron boundaries of three fibrinogen genes, we found a heterozygous single point mutation of T-->G at position 3356 of the patient fibrinogen Bbeta chain gene. This nucleotide mutation results in a nonsense mutation (TAT sequence for Bbeta 41Tyr to TAG sequence for a translation termination signal). The mutation was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, since this nucleotide mutation results in a new NheI recognition sequence at this position. These data indicated that the nonsense mutation of the fibrinogen Bbeta chain gene caused a truncated fibrinogen Bbeta chain, which may not be assembled in the fibrinogen molecule.