Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD) is characterized by early contractures of elbows and Achilles tendons, slowly progressive muscle wasting and weakness, and a cardiomyopathy with conduction blocks which is life-threatening. Two modes of inheritance exist, X-linked (OMIM 310300) and autosomal dominant (EDMD-AD; OMIM 181350). EDMD-AD is clinically identical to the X-linked forms of the disease. Mutations in EMD, the gene encoding emerin, are responsible for the X-linked form. We have mapped the locus for EDMD-AD to an 8-cM interval on chromosome 1q11-q23 in a large French pedigree, and found that the EMD phenotype in four other small families was potentially linked to this locus. This region contains the lamin A/C gene (LMNA), a candidate gene encoding two proteins of the nuclear lamina, lamins A and C, produced by alternative splicing. We identified four mutations in LMNA that co-segregate with the disease phenotype in the five families: one nonsense mutation and three missense mutations. These results are the first identification of mutations in a component of the nuclear lamina as a cause of inherited muscle disorder. Together with mutations in EMD (refs 5,6), they underscore the potential importance of the nuclear envelope components in the pathogenesis of neuromuscular disorders.

The Jervell and Lange-Nielsen (JLN) syndrome (MIM 220400) is an inherited autosomal recessive disease characterized by a congenital bilateral deafness associated with a QT prolongation on the electrocardiogram, syncopal attacks due to ventricular arrhythmias and a high risk of sudden death. JLN syndrome is a rare disease, which seems to affect less than one percent of all deaf children. Linkage to chromosome 11p15.5 markers was found by analysing four consanguinous families. Recombinants allowed us to map the JLN gene between D11S922 and D11S4146, to a 6-cM interval where KVLQT1, a potassium channel gene causing Romano-Ward (RW) syndrome, the dominant form of long QT syndrome, has been previously localized. An homozygous deletion-insertion event (1244, -7 +8) in the C-terminal domain of this gene was detected in three affected children of two families. We found that KVLQT1 is expressed in the stria vascularis of mouse inner ear by in situ hybridization. Taken together, our data indicate that KVLQT1 is responsible for both JLN and RW syndromes and has a key role not only in the ventricular repolarization but also in normal hearing, probably via the control of endolymph homeostasis.

This GWAS identified two loci involved in sporadic DCM, one of them probably implicates BAG3. Our results show that rare mutations in BAG3 contribute to monogenic forms of the disease, while common variant(s) in the same gene are implicated in sporadic DCM.