A Mitochondrial DNA Mutation as a Cause of Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy

Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy is a maternally inherited disease associated with the late onset of bilateral loss of central vision and cardiac dysrhythmias. The maternal inheritance is explained by the mitochondrial origin of the disease. Analysis of the sequence of a mitochondrial DNA has indicated that a single nucleotide change at position 11778 is associated with this disease. This mutation converts the 340th amino acid of NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 from an arginine to a histidine and eliminates an SfaNI endonuclease restriction site. A survey of restriction-fragment-length polymorphisms in the mitochondrial DNA of three independent families with this disease (an American black and two white European families) and 10 controls confirmed that this SfaNI site is associated with the disease. A phylogenetic tree for mitochondrial DNA polymorphism and sequence variants from three probands with Leber's disease and four controls was constructed, and the mutation at position 11778 was found to be associated with two mitochondrial DNA backgrounds--an American black mitochondrial DNA and a European mitochondrial DNA. Thus, this mutation must have arisen twice independently. Since the mutation correlated with symptoms of Leber's disease in both cases, these findings indicate that the mutation is a cause of the disease. This genetic analysis has identified the specific point mutation in the mitochondrial DNA that results in Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy.