With the rapid development of biotechnology, more than 100 genes causing deafness have been identified and cloned, but there are still a large number of hereditary deafness patients with unknown etiologies. Therefore, it is important to determine the molecular causes of hereditary deafness and reduce the rate of births with this disease. The samples selected in this study were not screened for GJB2, SLC26A4, or the 12S rRNA mitochondrial gene (m.1494C>T and m.1555A>G) as in previous works. Here, target sequencing was carried out for those 246 genes that were known or suspected to be related to deafness in order to search for gene variations causing this phenotype. The deafness gene panel used in this study was designed and tested by Hangzhou Lianchuan Biotechnology Co., LTD (LC-Bio); it includes 162 nuclear and mitochondrial genes that have been reported to be associated with deafness and 83 genes that have not yet been reported but may be associated with this disorder. Standard bioinformatics analysis procedures were applied to our results to identify possible gene pathogenic variants, including those rare variants where the candidates were limited to the minor allele frequency (MAF) < 0.5%. Based on the internal data from 207 normal hearing controls, no candidate dominant variant was found. Homozygous variants of alleles were identified only as candidate recessive variants, genotype-phenotype coisolation of family members was performed, and correlation analysis procedures were used to predict the effect of candidate variants on the corresponding proteins.
In this study, our 92 samples were found to carry a total of 1087 variants —including 973 non-synonymous variants, 28 nonsense variants, and 86 types of frameshift InDel mutations— of 178 different genes. From these, 126 genes and a total of 903 mutations were already associated with deafness in human beings. The other 52 genes, with 190 different mutations, have been associated with deafness in other species and with mitochondrial function in other diseases.
In this study, 30 homozygous variants were identified in 29 autosomal recessive hereditary deafness syndromes. In previous studies, 6 of these mutations have been proven to encode for pathogenic variations. We identified 26 novel mutations, from which 15 were either nonsense mutations or frameshift InDel mutations and 11 were missense mutations. Hilgert et al.[6] revealed that the most common deafening genes among European and American populations were GJB2, SLC26A4, OTOF, MYO15A, CDH23, and TMC1. After excluding the three most common genes causing deafness (i.e., GJB2, SLC26A4and mtDNA), Yang et al.[7], analyzing 28 deafness probands in 2013, found that the most frequent variations occurred in the MYO15A, GPR98, TMC1, USH2A, and PCDH15 genes. In 2019, Liu et al.[8] analyzed the incidence of deafness genes in 41 children with non-syndromic deafness who had cochlear implants in Taiwan and found that variations in the MYO15A, TMC1, MYH14, MYO3A, ACTG1, COL11A2, DSPP, GRHL2, and WFS1 genes were the most frequent. Our results showed that, in addition to the three common genes causing deafness, the MYO15A mutation (6/92) was the most commonly found, followed by CDH23 (3/92), OTOF (3/92), FGF3 (3/92), MYO7A (2/92), and SLC26A4 (2/92).
The MYO15A gene is located in chromosome 17p11.2; it encodes for XVA myosin, a protein with 3530 aa and a molecular weight of 39.5 kDa [9]. The MYO15A gene is usually associated with autosomal recessive deafness type 3. After comparing different ethnic groups, MYO15A has been considered to be the third or fourth most common deafness gene. Deafness caused by mutations in MYO15A are manifested as a congenital profound non-syndromic sensorineural deafness. Studies have shown that MYO15A plays an important role in the elongation and development of static cilia and actin filaments, the cohesiveness of the stereocilia also results from the interaction between the whirlin and MYO15A genes[10]. When a pathogenic mutation occurs in the MYO15A gene, ciliary dyskinesia can cause deafness[11]. Rehman Au et al. [12] reported 192 recessive mutations in 49 out of the 67 exons of MYO15A. Recently, more than 200 mutations in the MYO15A gene were identified. In this study, we found a total of 6 cases of homozygous variation (probands Jx81, Sf61, Sf67, Sf40, Sf88, and Jx50) that were all present in congenital profound deafness, which further confirmed the pathogenicity of MYO15A in the population.
CDH23 is located in the long arm of chromosome 10 (10q22.1) (National Center for Biotechnology Information NCBI, gene ID 64072). Some variations in this gene are the pathogenic cause of both autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss (DFNB12) and Usher syndrome 1D (USH1D). It has been reported that CDH23 is expressed in the stereocilia of the hair cells of the inner ear at the region of the connecting cilia at the junction between the inner and outer segments[13]. Besides, CDH23 is also harbored in the retina[14] within the calyceal processes of the cone photoreceptors[15]. CDH23 contains 70 exons that encode for approximately 3354 amino acids and has a cDNA size of 10 kb (https://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/Q9H251). The exons 2-64 encode extracellular repeat (EC) domains, while exon 65 and exons 66-70 encode single-pass transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains, respectively[16]. The main clinical characteristics of DFNB12 are profound sensorineural hearing loss and no retinitis pigmentosa. In turn, USH1D is associated with severe manifestations, including visual problems due to retinitis pigmentosa, congenital profound deafness, and vestibular areflexia[17]. In this study, we identified three novel homozygous candidate mutations c.393G>T (p.Leu131Phe), c.490dupG (p.Ala163fs), and c.1271_1273del (p.424_425del) of CDH23 in probands Sf48, Jx58, and Sf87. Sanger sequencing of available family members revealed that these mutations were present in all affected family individuals but not in normal individuals. All three patients manifested a congenital profound deafness with no ophthalmic diseases. Therefore, based on a clinical phenotypic characterization combined with each individual’s genotype, patients were diagnosed with autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss (DFNB12) caused by CDH23 mutations.
The OTOF gene, encoding otoferlin, is associated with recessive non-syndromic deafness DFNB9 and non-syndromic recessive acoustic neuropathy (NSRAN)[18]. Otoferlin, located in the basolateral region, is mainly expressed in the inner hair cells of the adult mammalian cochlea, participating in afferent synaptic contacts[19]. It was reported that otoferlin is involved in the docking of synaptic vesicles to the plasma membrane, mediating their fusion and exocytosis in a Ca2+ - dependent manner[20]. To date, more than 160 mutations in OTOF have been reported, and most of the patients with OTOF mutations have prelingual severe to profound hearing loss. In this study, the hearing levels in three patients with biallelic OTOF mutations were found to be mostly severe to profound, and according to the clinical manifestations and CT examination, the possibility of an auditory neuropathy was not diagnosed. The OTOF:c.2977_2978del variation has been reported in a Chinese patient with temperature-sensitive non-syndromic acoustic neuropathy[21]; besides; the Sf21 proband in this study was homozygous for this variant. This variant, which has not yet been identified in large population studies, is expected to cause transcoding, alter the amino acid sequence of the protein (starting at codon 994), and cause premature termination to produce truncated or missing proteins. c.2093delC, c.2807G>T, and c.2808_2809insTTC are novel mutations identified in this study. SF93 proband carried compound homozygous mutations of c.2807G>T and c.2808_2809insTTC, and had profound congenital prelingual sensorineural hearing loss. Sanger sequencing of available family members revealed that these mutations were not found in normal individuals.