The Fanconi anaemia group G gene FANCG is identical with XRCC9

Abstract

Fanconi anemia (FA) is an autosomal recessive disease with diverse clinical symptoms including developmental anomalies, bone marrow failure and early occurrence of malignancies¹. In addition to spontaneous chromosome instability, FA cells exhibit cell cycle disturbances and hypersensitivity to cross-linking agents¹. Eight complementation groups (A-H) have been distinguished², each group possibly representing a distinct FA gene³. The genes mutated in patients of complementation groups A (FANCA; Refs 4,5) and C (FANCC; ref. 6) have been identified, and FANCD has been mapped to chromosome band 3p22-26 (ref. 7). An additional FA gene has recently been mapped to chromosome 9p (ref. 8). Here we report the identification of the gene mutated in group G, FANCG, on the basis of complementation of an FA-G cell line and the presence of pathogenic mutations in four FA-G patients. We identified the gene as human XRCC9, a gene which has been shown to complement the MMC-sensitive Chinese hamster mutant UV40, and is suspected to be involved in DNA post-replication repair or cell cycle checkpoint control^9,10. The gene is localized to chromosome band 9p13 (ref. 9), corresponding with a known localization of an FA gene.