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V779G

Category 2 — Moderately DestabilizingLikely pathogenicLumenal · predictedσ-1 candidateEditorial
ValineGlycine at position 779 · C-terminal lumenal domain (653-869) · WFS1 (Wolframin)

Valine → Glycine at position 779 in wolframin's C-terminal lumenal domain. ClinVar Likely pathogenic with the full clinical spectrum documented — Wolfram syndrome 1, Wolfram-like syndrome, type 2 diabetes, cataract 41, and DFNA6 hearing loss. AlphaMissense 0.908, DynaMut2 ΔΔG -2.92 kcal/mol (destabilising).

Interactive 3D Structure

Wild-type reference
Wild-type V779 — hydrogen bond to I802
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DynaMut2 mutant · V779G
Mutant G779 — hydrogen bond to R703 lost (9 contacts lost)
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Bond changes · DynaMut2 interaction analysis

9 lost2 gained2 preserved
Interaction typeWild-type partnerMutant partnerStatus
Hydrogen bondR703Lost
Hydrogen bondD801Lost
Hydrogen bondI802I802Preserved
Polar contactR703Gained
Polar contactD801Lost
Polar contactI802I802Preserved
CarbonylR703Gained
Van der WaalsG702Lost
HydrophobicI777Lost
HydrophobicM781Lost
HydrophobicL804Lost
HydrophobicI823Lost
HydrophobicF825Lost

Lost / gained / preserved interatomic contacts at the variant residue, from the DynaMut2 (Arpeggio) interaction analysis of the wild-type and energy-minimized mutant structures.

Computational Predictions

DynaMut2 ΔΔG
-2.92kcal/mol
Destabilising — large
AlphaMissense
0.908
LPath
AlphaFold pLDDT
90
model confidence
Schema
Cat 2
Category 2 — Moderately Destabilizing

Clinical Evidence

ClinVar classificationLikely pathogenic
Review statuscriteria provided, single submitter
Associated conditionsAutosomal dominant nonsyndromic hearing loss 6 (DFNA6); Cataract 41; Wolfram syndrome 1; Wolfram-like syndrome; Type 2 diabetes mellitus
InheritanceBoth autosomal dominant and autosomal recessive forms documented. ClinVar lists this variant in association with DFNA6/14/38 (AD hearing loss), classical Wolfram syndrome (AR), and type 2 diabetes — consistent with WFS1's known dual inheritance landscape.
Population frequency (gnomAD v4)Absent from gnomAD v4
cDNA changec.2336T>G
ClinVar accessionVCV003590739
Last evaluated2024/06/21 00:00

Not observed in ~730k individuals — consistent with a rare allele (ACMG PM2_supporting).

Structural Context

Position 779 lies in wolframin's C-terminal lumenal domain (residues 653–869), the protein's largest soluble region and the primary interface for documented partner interactions with ATF6 and the Na+/K+ ATPase β1 subunit. The AlphaFold model shows V779 packed into a tight local cluster: GLY780 (2.4 Å) and THR778 (2.5 Å) are the immediate sequence neighbors, but the structural context also includes ARG703 (3.6 Å), PHE704 (4.8 Å), and ILE802 (3.8 Å) — residues from elsewhere in the lumenal fold that form a hydrophobic pocket against V779's isopropyl side chain.

Replacing valine with glycine at this position is unusually disruptive because glycine has no side chain. The wild-type contributes branched hydrophobic packing into the local pocket; the mutant removes that volume entirely. The resulting cavity is roughly the size of a methyl group and a methine — small, but structurally significant when the position was contributing to packing density. The backbone gains rotational freedom it did not have before, and the surrounding residues are no longer held in their pre-mutation geometry.

This explains the |ΔΔG| of 2.92 kcal/mol — one of only two variants in the entire 245-variant Atlas to cross the 2 kcal/mol moderate-destabilization threshold. The protein still folds (|ΔΔG| is well below the 4 kcal/mol gross-misfolding line), but the fold is energetically compromised and a fraction of the translated protein will be cleared by ER quality control before reaching its functional location.

Amino-acid chemistry
Valine (V) → Glycine (G) — a small, branched hydrophobic residue replaced by the smallest possible residue with no side chain at all.
Position in the protein
C-terminal lumenal domain · position 779 sits inside the ER lumen, within wolframin's largest soluble region. It is in a structurally well-defined neighborhood (pLDDT 90).

Druggability Assessment

Category 2 — Moderately Destabilizing. |ΔΔG| = 2.92 kcal/mol places this variant just inside the moderately destabilizing range. The fold survives but is energetically compromised; a fraction of mutant protein will misfold and be cleared before reaching functional sites.

This is a pharmacological chaperone candidate. The therapeutic strategy is not site-directed small-molecule design (the perturbation is global to a local fold, not a specific binding pocket) but rather a chaperone that stabilizes the wolframin fold and shifts the folding equilibrium toward functional protein. Analogous to CFTR correctors in cystic fibrosis: rescue the folding yield, not the catalytic site.

The breadth of clinical conditions (five documented phenotypes including both the classical AR Wolfram syndrome and the AD hearing loss pattern) makes this a particularly high-value chaperone target: a single intervention could address multiple clinical presentations across both inheritance modes.

Why this matters

V779G is one of only two variants in the entire Atlas (along with W700S) where |ΔΔG| exceeds 2 kcal/mol. That's two outliers out of 245 — and even these outliers sit well below the 4 kcal/mol gross-misfolding threshold that would force a gene-therapy strategy. The Atlas's central finding holds even here: WFS1 pathogenic variants do not gross-misfold. They damage the fold in measurable but tractable ways, and small molecules are the right therapeutic vector for the entire pathogenic spectrum.
Therapeutic Strategy Handoff · prediction

Feed this card to Wolfram Intelligence

Download the V779G PDF below and upload it to Wolfram Intelligence to generate therapeutic-strategy proposals — guanidinium mimetics, sigma-1 agonist docking, NAC thiol-capping. NAC is already on the bench-testing list.

Download V779G PDF card ↓Strategies are AI-generated predictions, not validated therapeutics.

UniProt Domain Annotation

Chain1890 · Wolframin
Topological domain653869 · Lumenal
Natural variant779779 · in DFNA6; benign; dbSNP:rs141328044