Stephanie Efthymiou, Wenyan Han, Muhammad Ilyas, Jun Li, Yichao Yu, Marcello Scala, Nancy T Malintan, Muhammad Ilyas, Nikoleta Vavouraki, Kshitij Mankad, Reza Maroofian, Clarissa Rocca, Vincenzo Salpietro, Shenela Lakhani, Eric J Mallack, Timothy Blake Palculict, Hong Li, Guojun Zhang, Faisal Zafar, Nuzhat Rana, Noriko Takashima, Hayato Matsunaga, Claudia Manzoni, Pasquale Striano, Mark F Lythgoe, Jun Aruga, Wei Lu, Henry Houlden
This study reports on biallelic homozygous and monoallelic de novo variants in SLITRK3 in three unrelated families presenting with epileptic encephalopathy associated with a broad neurological involvement characterized by microcephaly, intellectual disability, seizures, and global developmental delay. SLITRK3 encodes for a transmembrane protein that is involved in controlling neurite outgrowth and inhibitory synapse development and that has an important role in brain function and neurological diseases. Using primary cultures of hippocampal neurons carrying patients' SLITRK3 variants and in combination with electrophysiology, we demonstrate that recessive variants are loss-of-function alleles...
2024: Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience