Overview

Pathogenicity: Alzheimer's Disease : Not Classified
ACMG/AMP Pathogenicity Criteria: PS3, PM1, PM2, PM5, PP2, PP3
Clinical Phenotype: Alzheimer's Disease
Reference Assembly: GRCh37/hg19
Position: Chr14:73640362 A>G
dbSNP ID: NA
Coding/Non-Coding: Coding
DNA Change: Substitution
Expected RNA Consequence: Substitution
Expected Protein Consequence: Missense
Codon Change: ATT to GTT
Reference Isoform: PSEN1 Isoform 1 (467 aa)
Genomic Region: Exon 5

Findings

This mutation was identified in an Italian woman with early onset Alzheimer’s disease (Gallo et al., 2011). She had a strong family history of dementia: 13 family members over four generations showed signs of the disease. Disease transmission appeared to be autosomal-dominant. Segregation of the mutation with disease could not be formally shown due to lack of DNA from family members.

The proband in the Italian family developed symptoms at age 55. She presented with personality changes, apathy, decreased verbal fluency, and temporal and spatial disorientation. She later developed visual hallucinations and myoclonus. She died at age 75. The average age of onset in the family was 54 and the average age at death was 65.

This variant was absent from the gnomAD variant database (gnomAD v2.1.1, May 2021).

Neuropathology

Autopsy of the proband confirmed the diagnosis of AD. There was severe atrophy of the frontal and temporal lobes. Amyloid plaques were abundant in the cerebral cortex and also present in other regions including the caudate nucleus, putamen, thalamus, globus pallidus, and brainstem. Amyloid deposits were comprised largely of Aβ42, with little to no Aβ40. Neurofibrillary pathology was severe (stage VI Braak and Braak). There was little to no amyloid angiopathy in vessels (Gallo et al., 2011).

Biological Effect

When transfected into HEK293 cells stably expressing Swedish mtAPP695 and BACE1, this mutation impaired the carboxypeptidase-like γ-cleavage, but spared the endoproteolytic ε-cleavage activity of PSEN1. This resulted in higher levels of secreted Aβ42 (Li et al., 2016). Consistent with this finding, an in vitro assay using purified proteins to test the ability of this mutant to cleave the APP-C99 substrate revealed it produces similar levels of Aβ40 as wild-type PSEN1, but increased levels of Aβ42 resulting in an elevated Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio (Bai et al., 2015; Sun et al., 2017). A cryo-electron microscopy study of the atomic structure of γ-secretase bound to an APP fragment indicates that, in wild-type PSEN1, I143 is apposed to the APP transmembrane helix, with its side-chain reaching towards the interior of the substrate-binding pore (Zhou et al., 2019; Jan 2019 news). Moreover, multiple mutations at this residue have been tied to AD.

Although one study reported that in silico algorithms to predict the effects of this variant on protein function yielded conflicting results (Xiao et al., 2021), the CADD-PHRED tool, which integrates diverse information, gave it a high deleteriousness score above 20 (CADD v.1.6, Sep 2021)..

Pathogenicity

Alzheimer's Disease : Not Classified*

*This variant fulfilled some ACMG-AMP criteria, but it was not classified by Alzforum, because data for either a pathogenic or benign classification are lacking: only one affected carrier has been reported without co-segregation data, and the variant is absent—or very rare—in the gnomAD database.

This variant fulfilled the following criteria based on the ACMG/AMP guidelines. See a full list of the criteria in the Methods page.

PS3-S

Well-established in vitro or in vivo functional studies supportive of a damaging effect on the gene or gene product.

PM1-S

Located in a mutational hot spot and/or critical and well-established functional domain (e.g. active site of an enzyme) without benign variation. I143V: Variant is in a mutational hot spot and cryo-EM data suggest residue is of functional importance.

PM2-M

Absent from controls (or at extremely low frequency if recessive) in Exome Sequencing Project, 1000 Genomes Project, or Exome Aggregation Consortium. *Alzforum uses the gnomAD variant database.

PM5-M

Novel missense change at an amino acid residue where a different missense change determined to be pathogenic has been seen before.

PP2-P

Missense variant in a gene that has a low rate of benign missense variation and where missense variants are a common mechanism of disease.

PP3-P

Multiple lines of computational evidence support a deleterious effect on the gene or gene product (conservation, evolutionary, splicing impact, etc.). *In most cases, Alzforum applies this criterion when the variant’s PHRED-scaled CADD score is greater than or equal to 20.

	Pathogenic (PS, PM, PP)			Benign (BA, BS, BP)
Criteria Weighting	Strong (-S)	Moderate (-M)	Supporting (-P)	Supporting (-P)	Strong (-S)	Strongest (BA)

Last Updated: 22 Feb 2022

Comments

No Available Comments

Make a Comment

To make a comment you must login or register.

References

News Citations

Paper Citations

Gallo M, Marcello N, Curcio SA, Colao R, Geracitano S, Bernardi L, Anfossi M, Puccio G, Frangipane F, Clodomiro A, Mirabelli M, Vasso F, Smirne N, Muraca G, Di Lorenzo R, Maletta R, Ghidoni E, Bugiani O, Tagliavini F, Giaccone G, Bruni AC. A novel pathogenic PSEN1 mutation in a family with Alzheimer's disease: phenotypical and neuropathological features. J Alzheimers Dis. 2011;25(3):425-31. PubMed.
Li N, Liu K, Qiu Y, Ren Z, Dai R, Deng Y, Qing H. Effect of Presenilin Mutations on APP Cleavage; Insights into the Pathogenesis of FAD. Front Aging Neurosci. 2016;8:51. Epub 2016 Mar 11 PubMed.
Bai XC, Yan C, Yang G, Lu P, Ma D, Sun L, Zhou R, Scheres SH, Shi Y. An atomic structure of human γ-secretase. Nature. 2015 Sep 10;525(7568):212-7. Epub 2015 Aug 17 PubMed.
Sun L, Zhou R, Yang G, Shi Y. Analysis of 138 pathogenic mutations in presenilin-1 on the in vitro production of Aβ42 and Aβ40 peptides by γ-secretase. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Jan 24;114(4):E476-E485. Epub 2016 Dec 5 PubMed.
Zhou R, Yang G, Guo X, Zhou Q, Lei J, Shi Y. Recognition of the amyloid precursor protein by human γ-secretase. Science. 2019 Feb 15;363(6428) Epub 2019 Jan 10 PubMed.
Xiao X, Liu H, Liu X, Zhang W, Zhang S, Jiao B. APP, PSEN1, and PSEN2 Variants in Alzheimer's Disease: Systematic Re-evaluation According to ACMG Guidelines. Front Aging Neurosci. 2021;13:695808. Epub 2021 Jun 18 PubMed.

Mutations

PSEN1 I143V

Quick Links