High-throughput splicing assays identify missense and silent splice-disruptive POU1F1 variants underlying pituitary hormone deficiency

Abstract

Pituitary hormone deficiency occurs in [~]1:4,000 live births. Approximately 3% of the cases are due to mutations in the alpha isoform of POU1F1, a pituitary-specific transcriptional activator. We found four separate heterozygous missense variants in unrelated hypopituitarism patients that were predicted to affect a minor isoform, POU1F1 beta, which can act as a transcriptional repressor. These variants retain repressor activity, but they shift splicing to favor the expression of the beta isoform, resulting in dominant negative loss of function. Using a high throughput splicing reporter assay, we tested 1,080 single nucleotide variants in POU1F1. We identified 113 splice disruptive variants, including 23 synonymous variants. We evaluated separate cohorts of hypopituitarism patients and found two different synonymous splice disruptive variants that co-segregate with hypopituitarism. This study underlines the importance of evaluating the impact of variants on splicing and provides a catalog for interpretation of variants of unknown significance in the POU1F1 gene.