Mutations Causing Mild or No Structural Damage in Interfaces of Multimerization of the Fibrinogen γ-Module More Likely Confer Negative Dominant Behaviors

Abstract

Different pathogenic variants in the same protein or even within the same domain of a protein may differ in their patterns of disease inheritance, with some of the variants behaving as negative dominant and others as autosomal recessive mutations. Here is presented a structural analysis and comparison of the molecular characteristics of the sites in fibrinogen γ-module, a fibrinogen component critical in multimerization processes, targeted by pathogenic variants (HGMD database) and by variants found in the healthy population (gnomAD database). The main result of this study is the identification of the molecular pathogenic mechanisms defining which pattern of disease inheritance is selected by mutations at the crossroad of autosomal recessive and negative dominant modalities. The observations in this analysis also warn about the possibility that several variants reported in the non-pathogenic gnomAD database might indeed be a hidden source of diseases with autosomal recessive inheritance or requiring a combination with other disease-causing mutations. Disease presentation might remain mostly unrevealed simply because the very low variant frequency rarely results in biallelic pathogenic mutations or the coupling with mutations in other genes contributing to the same disease. The results here presented provide hints for a deeper search of pathogenic mechanisms and modalities of disease inheritance for protein mutants participating in multimerization phenomena.