ClinVar

Description

MRE11A has been only recently described in association with cancer predisposition and the risks are not well understood. This variant is denoted MRE11A c.604A>G at the cDNA level, p.Arg202Gly (R202G) at the protein level, and results in the change of an Arginine to a Glycine (AGA>GGA). This variant was observed in a breast cancer patient who was also heterozygous for CHEK1100delC and in 1/363 healthy female controls (Bartkova 2008). Protein studies of MRE11 Arg202Gly by Park et al. (2011) were inconclusive, yet they noted that the variant could contribute to local stability around the Nbs1-binding region. MRE11A Arg202Gly was not observed in approximately 6,500 individuals of European and African American ancestry in the NHLBI Exome Sequencing Project, indicating it is not a common benign variant in these populations. This variant is a non-conservative substitution in which a positive polar amino acid is replaced with a neutral non-polar one, altering a position that is well conserved throughout evolution and is located within the phosphoesterase domain (Bartkova 2008). Multiple in silico algorithms predict that this variant may be damaging to protein structure and function. On a molecular level, the impact of this missense variant on protein structure and function is not known and thus we consider this to be a variant of uncertain significance. Furthermore, based on the currently available information, cancer risks associated with this variant, and the MRE11A gene, remain unclear.