Molecular and functional characterization of a new X-linked chronic granulomatous disease variant (X91 +) case with a double missense mutation in the cytosolic gp91 phox C-terminal tail

Abstract

We report here two atypical cases of X-linked CGD patients (first cousins) in which cytochrome b 558 is present at a normal level but is not functional (X91 +). The mutations were localized by single-strand conformational polymorphism of reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction amplified fragments and then identified by sequence analysis. They consisted in two base substitutions (C919 to A and C923 to G), changing His303 to Asn and Pro304 to Arg in the cytosolic gp91 phox C-terminal tail. Mismatched polymerase chain reaction and genomic DNA sequencing showed that mothers had both wild-type and mutated alleles, confirming that this case was transmitted in an X-linked fashion. A normal amount of FAD was found in neutrophil membranes, both in the X91 + patients and their parents. Epstein–Barr virus-transformed B lymphocytes from the X91 + patients acidified normally upon stimulation with arachidonic acid, indicating that the mutated gp91 phox still functioned as a proton channel. A cell-free translocation assay demonstrated that the association of the cytosolic factors p47 phox and p67 phox with the membrane fraction was strongly disrupted. We concluded that residues 303 and 304 are crucial for the stable assembly of the NADPH oxidase complex and for electron transfer, but not for its proton channel activity.