Temperature-dependent expression of a collagen splicing defect in the fibroblasts of a patient with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome Type VII

In this article we report the characterization of the molecular lesion in a patient with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome Type VII and provide evidence that a de novo substitution of the last nucleotide of exon 6 in one allele of the pro-α2(I) collagen gene produces normally spliced mRNA and transcripts from which exon 6 sequences have been outspliced as well. Unexpectedly, the expression of the alternative splicing was found to be temperature-dependent, for missplicing in cellula is effectively abolished at 31°C and gradually increases to 100% at 39°C. In contrast, in a similar patient harboring a substitution in the obligatory GT dinucleotide of the 5' splice site of intron 6, complete out-splicing of exon 6 sequences was found at all temperatures.