Familial occurrence of typical and severe lethal congenital contractural arachnodactyly caused by missplicing of exon 34 of fibrillin-2.

Genetic linkage studies have linked congenital contractural arachnodactyly (CCA), a usually mild heritable connective-tissue disorder, to FBN2, the fibrillin gene on chromosome 5. Recently, FBN2 mutations in two patients with CCA have been described. Here we report an A-->T transversion at the -2 position of the consensus acceptor splice site, resulting in the missplicing of exon 34, a calcium-binding epidermal growth factor-like repeat in fibrillin-2 in a mother and daughter with CCA. Significantly, the mother exhibited a classic CCA phenotype with arachnodactyly, joint contractures, and abnormal pinnae, whereas her daughter exhibited a markedly more severe CCA phenotype, which included cardiovascular and gastrointestinal anomalies that led to death in infancy. Analysis of cloned fibroblasts showed that the mother is a somatic mosaic for the exon 34 missplicing mutation, whereas all the daughter''s cells harbored the mutation.