SMC5 Plays Independent Roles in Congenital Heart Disease and Neurodevelopmental Disability

Up to 50% of patients with severe congenital heart disease (CHD) develop life-altering neurodevelopmental disability (NDD). It has been presumed that NDD arises in CHD cases because of hypoxia before, during, or after cardiac surgery. Recent studies detected an enrichment in de novo mutations in CHD and NDD, as well as significant overlap between CHD and NDD candidate genes. However, there is limited evidence demonstrating that genes causing CHD can produce NDD independent of hypoxia. A patient with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and gross motor delay presented with a de novo mutation in SMC5. Modeling mutation of smc5 in Xenopus tropicalis embryos resulted in reduced heart size, decreased brain length, and disrupted pax6 patterning. To evaluate the cardiac development, we induced the conditional knockout (cKO) of Smc5 in mouse cardiomyocytes, which led to the depletion of mature cardiomyocytes and abnormal contractility. To test a role for Smc5 specifically in the brain, we induced cKO in the mouse central nervous system, which resulted in decreased brain volume, and diminished connectivity between areas related to motor function but did not affect vascular or brain ventricular volume. We propose that genetic factors, rather than hypoxia alone, can contribute when NDD and CHD cases occur concurrently.