Abteilung für Pädiatrische Genetik der Kinderpoliklinik, München, Germany.
The Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (WASP) gene was found to be mutated in patients presenting with WAS and in patients showing X-linked thrombocytopenia. Mutation analysis in 19 families of German, Swiss and Turkish descent by single-strand conformation polymorphism and sequencing resulted in the detection of seven novel and 10 known mutations. A striking clustering of missense mutations in the first four exons contrasted with a random distribution of nonsense mutations. More than 85% of all known missense mutations were localized in the amino-terminal stretch of the WASP gene product; this region contained a mutational hot spot at codon 86. No genotype-phenotype correlation emerged after a comparison of the identified mutations with the resulting clinical picture for a classical WAS phenotype. A substitution at codon 86 resulted in an extremely variable expression of the disease in a large Swiss family. An extended homology search revealed a distant relationship of this stretch to the vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP), which is involved in the maintenance of cyto-architecture by interacting with actin-like filaments.