FOXP1 mutations

Inspired by an almost 10 year old girl with hitherto undiagnosed cognitive handicap caused by a de novo FOXP1 mutation discovered through whole exome sequencing.  The parents had been reluctant to consider further children until this diagnosis was made.

Sollis E, Graham SA, Vino A, Froehlich H, Vreeburg M, Dimitropoulou D,

Gilissen C, Pfundt R, Rappold GA, Brunner HG, Deriziotis P, Fisher SE.

Identification and functional characterization of de novo FOXP1 variants provides novel insights into the etiology of neurodevelopmental disorder. Hum Mol Genet.2016 Feb 1;25(3):546-57.

Abstract

De novo disruptions of the neural transcription factor FOXP1 are a recently discovered, rare cause of sporadic intellectual disability (ID). We report three new cases of FOXP1-related disorder identified through clinical whole-exome sequencing. Detailed phenotypic assessment confirmed that global developmental delay, autistic features, speech/language deficits, hypotonia and mild dysmorphic features are core features of the disorder. We expand the phenotypic spectrum to include sensory integration disorder and hypertelorism. Notably, the etiological variants in these cases include two missense variants within the DNA-binding domain of FOXP1. Only one such variant has been reported previously. The third patient carries a stop-gain variant. We performed functional characterization of the three missense variants alongside our stop-gain and two previously described truncating/frameshift variants. All variants severely disrupted multiple aspects of protein function. Strikingly, the missense variants had similarly severe effects on protein function as the truncating/frameshift variants. Our findings indicate that a loss of transcriptional repression activity of FOXP1 underlies the neurodevelopmental phenotype in FOXP1-related disorder. Interestingly, the three novel variants retained the ability to interact with wild-type FOXP1, suggesting these variants could exert a dominant-negative effect by interfering with the normal FOXP1 protein. These variants also retained the ability to interact with FOXP2, a paralogous transcription factor disrupted in rare cases of speech and language disorder. Thus, speech/language deficits in these individuals might be worsened through deleterious effects on FOXP2 function. Our findings highlight that de novo FOXP1 variants are a cause of sporadic ID and emphasize the importance of this transcription factor in neurodevelopment.

Lozano R, Vino A, Lozano C, Fisher SE, Deriziotis P. A de novo FOXP1 variant

in a patient with autism, intellectual disability and severe speech and language impairment. Eur J Hum Genet. 2015 Dec;23(12):1702-7.

Abstract

FOXP1 (forkhead box protein P1) is a transcription factor involved in the development of several tissues, including the brain. An emerging phenotype of patients with protein-disrupting FOXP1 variants includes global developmental delay, intellectual disability and mild to severe speech/language deficits. We report on a female child with a history of severe hypotonia, autism spectrum disorder and mild intellectual disability with severe speech/language impairment. Clinical exome sequencing identified a heterozygous de novo FOXP1 variant c.1267_1268delGT (p.V423Hfs*37). Functional analyses using cellular models show that the variant disrupts multiple aspects of FOXP1 activity, including subcellular localization and transcriptional repression properties. Our findings highlight the importance of performing functional characterization to help uncover the biological significance of variants identified by genomics approaches, thereby providing insight into pathways underlying complex neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, our data support the hypothesis that de novo variants represent significant causal factors in severe sporadic disorders and extend the phenotype seen in individuals with FOXP1 haploinsufficiency.neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, our data support the hypothesis that de novo variants represent significant causal factors in severe sporadic disorders and extend the phenotype seen in individuals with FOXP1 haploinsufficiency.