Deletion of the murine survival of motor neuron gene (SMN) exon 7, the most frequent mutation found in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) patients, directed to neurons but not to skeletal muscle, enabled generation of a mouse model of SMA providing evidence that motor neurons are the primary target of the gene defect. Moreover, the mutated SMN protein (SMNDeltaC15) is dramatically reduced in the mot...

BACKGROUND Autosomal recessive spinal muscle atrophy (SMA) is characterized by the loss of α motor neurons resulting in progressive muscle loss and respiratory failure. SMA is one of the most common inherited causes of infant death with a carrier frequency of 1 in 50 and a calculated prevalence of about 1 in 11,000 live births in the US. The low amount of functional survival motor neuron (SMN) ...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neuromuscular disorder caused by reduced levels of the survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. Here we show that the proteasome inhibitor, bortezomib, increases SMN in cultured cells and in peripheral tissues of SMA model mice. Bortezomib-treated animals had improved motor function, which was associated with reduced spinal cord and muscle pathology and improved n...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by homozygous loss of the survival motor neuron (SMN1) gene. In virtually all SMA patients, a nearly identical copy gene is present, SMN2. SMN2 cannot fully compensate for the loss of SMN1 because the majority of transcripts derived from SMN2 lack a critical exon (exon 7), resulting in a dysfunctional SMN protein. Therefore, the critical distinction betwe...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a devastating neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor neuron loss and muscle atrophy, has been linked to mutations in the Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) gene. Based on an SMA model we developed in Drosophila, which displays features that are analogous to the human pathology and vertebrate SMA models, we functionally linked the fibroblast growth factor (FGF)...

Spinal Muscular Atrophy is a recessive genetic disease and affects lower motor neurones and muscle tissue. A single gene is disrupted in SMA: SMN1 activity is abolished but a second copy of the gene (SMN2) provides limited activity. While the SMN protein has been shown to function in the assembly of RNA-protein complexes, it is unclear how the overall reduction in SMN activity specifically resu...

Mutation of the survival motor neurons 1 (SMN1) gene causes motor neuron apoptosis and represents the major cause of spinal muscular atrophy in humans. Biochemical studies have established that the SMN protein plays an important role in spliceosomal small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP) biogenesis and that the SMN complex can interact with the zinc finger protein ZPR1. Here we report that tar...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting lower motor neurons. SMA is caused by mutations in the Survival Motor Neuron 1 (SMN1) gene, which result in reduced levels of functional SMN protein. Biochemical studies have linked the ubiquitously expressed SMN protein to the assembly of pre-mRNA processing U snRNPs, raising the possibility that aberrant splici...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neurological disorder characterized by motor neuron degeneration and progressive muscle paralysis. The disease is caused by a reduction in survival of motor neuron (SMN) protein resulting from homozygous deletion of the SMN1 gene. SMN protein is also encoded by SMN2. However, splicing of SMN2 exon 7 is defective, and consequently, the majority of the transcrip...

In humans, assembly of spliceosomal snRNPs (small nuclear ribonucleoproteins) begins in the cytoplasm where the multi-protein SMN (survival of motor neuron) complex mediates the formation of a seven-membered ring of Sm proteins on to a conserved site of the snRNA (small nuclear RNA). The SMN complex contains the SMN protein Gemin2 and several additional Gemins that participate in snRNP biosynth...