Phenotype Analysis and Genetic Study of Chinese Patients With Treacher Collins Syndrome

The aim of this study was to confirm the pathogenic variants, explore the genotype-phenotype correlation and characteristics of Chinese patients with Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS).

Clinical details of 3 TCS family cases and 2 sporadic cases were collected and analyzed. Whole-exome sequencing and Sanger sequencing were conducted to detect causative variants.

Tertiary clinical care.

This study included 8 patients clinically diagnosed with TCS who were from 3 familial cases and 2 sporadic cases.

When filtering the database, variants were saved as rare variants if their frequency were less than 0.005 in the 1000 Genomes Project Database, the Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC) browser, and the Novogene database, or they would be removed as common ones. The pathogenic variants identified were verified by polymerase chain reaction. The sequencing results were analyzed by Chromas 2.1 software.

Two novel pathogenic variants (NM_000356.3: c.537del and NM_000356.3: c.1965_1966dupGG) and 2 known pathogenic variants (NM_000356.3: c.1535del, NM_000356.3: c.4131_4135del) were identified within TCOF1 which are predicted to lead to premature termination codons resulting in a truncated protein. There was a known missense SNP (NM_015972.3: c.139G>A) within POLR1D. No phenotype-genotype correlation was observed. Instead, these 8 patients demonstrated the high genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity of TCS.

This study expands on the pathogenic gene pool of Chinese patients with TCS. Besides the great variation among patients which is similar to international reports, Chinese patients have their own characteristics in clinical phenotype and pathogenesis mutations.