Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is caused by deletions of 3.3-kb tandemly repeated units contained within a large polymorphic EcoRI fragment close to the telomere of chromosome 4q. Since the rearrangements were assumed to interfere with the structure or function of the putative FSHD gene, the gene search was focused on cosmids containing these repeat units and, in addition, cosmid...

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy is a dominantly inherited myopathy associated with chromatin relaxation of the D4Z4 macrosatellite array on chromosome 4. DUX4 is encoded within each unit of the D4Z4 array where it is normally transcriptionally silenced and packaged as constitutive heterochromatin. Truncation of the array to less than 11 D4Z4 units (FSHD1) or mutations in SMCHD1 (FSHD2) r...

Muscular dystrophy and peripheral neuropathy have been linked to mutations in genes encoding nuclear envelope proteins; however, the molecular mechanisms underlying these disorders remain unresolved. Nuclear envelope protein p19A is a protein of unknown function encoded by a gene at chromosome 4q35. p19A levels are significantly reduced in human muscle as cells differentiate from myoblasts to m...

Clinical data are presented from a survey of 41 families with dominantly inherited facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) in which over 500 family members were examined, including 168 affected subjects. New mutation could account for six isolated cases. Results suggest that 33% of heterozygotes over 40 years are mildly affected and a majority develop significant lower limb weakness; 19% ...

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is an autosomal dominant myopathy with a strong epigenetic component. It is associated with deletion of a macrosatellite repeat leading to over-expression of the nearby genes. Among them, we focused on FSHD region gene 1 (FRG1) since its over-expression in mice, Xenopus laevis and Caenorhabditis elegans, leads to muscular dystrophy-like defects, sug...

Although recent publications have linked the molecular events driving facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) to expression of the double homeobox transcription factor DUX4, overexpression of FRG1 has been proposed as one alternative causal agent as mice overexpressing FRG1 present with muscular dystrophy. Here, we characterize proliferative defects in two independent myoblast lines overe...