Biallelic variants in <i>GTF3C3</i> encoding a subunit of the TFIIIC2 complex are associated with neurodevelopmental phenotypes in humans and zebrafish
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract RNA polymerase III transcribes essential non-coding RNAs, a process regulated by transcription factors TFIIIB and TFIIIC. Although germline variants in TFIIIC subunit genes have been described in a few patients with neurodevelopmental disorders, the associated pathogenesis and clinical spectrum are not yet well defined. Herein, we describe the identification of biallelic variants in GTF3C3, which encodes a key component of the TFIIIC subunit, in four patients from three unrelated families of different ethnicities collected through GeneMatcher. The patients exhibited microcephaly, developmental delay, intellectual disability and distinctive dysmorphic facies that appear recognizable in very young children. Their brain imaging showed brain atrophy with predominant cerebellar involvement, as well as hypoplasia of the frontal lobes and one patient had moderate to severe simplified gyral pattern. Seizures were observed in half of the patients. Exome/genome sequencing revealed four different GTF3C3 variants including three missense (p.Cys172Gly, p.Val427Phe and p.Ala509Thr) and one nonsense variant (p.Arg717Ter). Missense variants were not present in known genetic databases and occurred in highly conserved residues. Knockout of the GTF3C3 ortholog in zebrafish recapitulated the key clinical symptoms including microcephaly, brain anomalies and seizure susceptibility. We also observed reduced RNA polymerase III target gene expression in the zebrafish knockout model. This study describes a new neurodevelopmental syndrome in humans and zebrafish associated with biallelic GTF3C3 variants and underscores the need for further research into the biological impacts of variants in TFIIIC-linked genes and their contribution to RNA polymerase III-related pathologies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".