Abstract

The involvement of the cartilage specific type II collagen gene (COL2A1) was studied in nine patients with diastrophic dysplasia in the Finnish population, where the prevalence of this chondrodystrophy clearly exceeds that reported for other populations. COL2A1 was chosen as the candidate gene based on previous morphological and chemical studies which suggested abnormal structure of type II collagen in diastrophic dysplasia. Southern analysis of the patients' DNA showed no disease related differences in any of the restriction fragments covering the 30 kb COL2A1 gene. As a second approach, the nine patients and their 74 relatives were studied for the inheritance of the type II collagen gene. Three of the patients with diastrophic dysplasia were not homozygous for the intragenic RFLP markers, which suggests that the disease is not linked to the type II collagen gene. Multipoint linkage analysis gave a lod score of -2.95, which conclusively excluded the COL2A1 gene as the mutation site in diastrophic dysplasia in these families.