Publications by authors named "Marina Kerr"

Biallelic variants in the gene are associated with Wolfram syndrome. However, recent publications document that heterozygous variants can lead to a variety of phenotypes, such as Wolfram-like syndrome or isolated features of Wolfram syndrome. In this case report, we present a male patient with a history of congenital cataracts and subjective complaints of muscle weakness.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated the causes and effects of reversible acute liver failure (ALF) in infants due to harmful TRMU gene variants, focusing on the potential benefits of cysteine supplementation for treatment.
  • Among 62 individuals studied, 47 pathogenic TRMU variants were identified, with nearly all patients experiencing liver issues and many surviving beyond early childhood despite severe ALF cases in infancy, including some who underwent liver transplants.
  • Results indicated that liver failure was generally reversible in patients associated with TRMU variants, and cysteine supplementation significantly enhanced survival rates, although neurodevelopmental challenges persisted in some survivors.
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TOP1MT encodes a mitochondrial topoisomerase that is important for mtDNA regulation and is involved in mitochondrial replication, transcription, and translation. Two variants predicted to affect TOP1MT function (V1 - R198C and V2 - V338L) were identified by exome sequencing of a newborn with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. As no pathogenic TOP1MT variants had been confirmed previously, we characterized these variants for their ability to rescue several TOP1MT functions in KO cells.

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Background And Objective: Pathogenic variants in KCNT1 have been associated with severe forms of epilepsy, typically sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy or epilepsy of infancy with migrating focal seizures. To show that pathogenic variants in KCNT1 can be associated with mild extra-frontal epilepsy, we report a KCNT1 family with a wide spectrum of phenotypes ranging from developmental and epileptic encephalopathy to mild focal epilepsy without cognitive regression and not consistent with sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy.

Methods: A large Canadian family of Caucasian descent including 9 affected family members was recruited.

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Millions of patients, with suspected complex neurogenetic disorders, living in resource limited regions around the world have no access to genetic testing despite the rapidly expanding availability and decreasing costs of genetic testing in first world nations. The barriers to increasing availability of genetic testing in resource limited nations are multifactorial but can be attributed, in large part, to a lack of awareness of the power of genetic testing to lead to a rapid, cost-effective, diagnosis that potentially will have profound clinical implications on treatment and patient outcomes. We report our experience with whole exome sequencing (WES) done for the first time in 5 patients of African descent with a suspected neurogenetic disorder living in a resource limited setting on the Eastern Caribbean island of Barbados.

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This case report describes 2 siblings with myoclonic epilepsy who had novel mutations in the glutamine synthetase () gene: c.316C>T, p.(Arg106*) and c.

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Mitochondrial diseases, due to nuclear or mitochondrial genome mutations causing mitochondrial dysfunction, have a wide range of clinical features involving neurologic, muscular, cardiac, hepatic, visual, and auditory symptoms. Making a diagnosis of a mitochondrial disease is often challenging since there is no gold standard and traditional testing methods have required tissue biopsy which presents technical challenges and most patients prefer a non-invasive approach. Since a diagnosis invariably involves finding a disease-causing DNA variant, new approaches such as next generation sequencing (NGS) have the potential to make it easier to make a diagnosis.

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Mitochondrial methionyl-tRNA formyltransferase () is a nuclear-encoded gene that produces a protein involved in mitochondrial translation. MTFMT formylates a portion of Met-tRNA, which allows for translation initiation of mitochondrial mRNA. Mutations in this gene have been shown to result in decreased mitochondrial translation with reduction function of the electron transport chain complexes I, III, IV, and V, thus affecting cellular energy production.

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Aminoacyl transfer RNA (tRNA) synthetase complex-interacting multifunctional protein I is a noncatalytic component of tRNA multi-synthetase complexes. Although important in joining tRNAs to their cognate amino acids, AIMP1 has several other functions including axonal growth, cytokine activity, and interactions with -acetylaspartic acid in ribosomal tRNA synthetase complexes. Further, -acetylaspartic acid donates an aspartate during myelination and is therefore important to axonal integrity.

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