Is mitochondrial tRNA(Ser(UCN)) T7501C mutation associated with cardiovascular disease?

Mitochondrial DNA mutations are increasingly recognized as an important cause of cardiovascular diseases, point mutations in mitochondrial tRNA genes being the largest group among them. Most recently, mutation at position 7501 in mt-tRNA(Ser(UCN)) gene has been reported to be associated with human cardiovascular diseases including cardiomyopathy, sudden cardiac death (SCD) and Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF). However, its direct pathogenic role remained poorly understood. In this study, we performed an extensive web-based search for the published resources concerning this association. Through the application of bioinformatics tool, we observed that this mutation altered the mt-tRNA(Ser(UCN)) secondary structure, in addition, evolutionary conservation analysis of this mutation indicated that this mutation is highly conserved between different species. Notably, the T7501C mutation belonging to human mitochondrial haplogroup U8a1a1, a rare subgroup of U8, was present only in European population and was absent in Han Chinese population. Taken together, our result indicated that the T7501C mutation may occur infrequently and was probably pathogenic in cardiovascular disease development.