Data supporting "A MOPD II-associated Pericentrin variant disrupts PACT domain dimerization and pericentriolar material recruitment"

Centrosome dysfunction is linked to developmental disorders affecting brain and body size, including microcephaly and primordial dwarfism. However, the cellular mechanisms underlying these rare conditions remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigate a rare variant of the centrosome-associated protein Pericentrin (Anitha et al., 2008), which was discovered in a single family with Majewski/microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II (MOPD II). Unlike the majority of pathogenic PCNT variants that cause severe protein truncation, the p.Lys3154del variant (ΔK3154) involves a single amino acid deletion in the protein’s only conserved functional domain, providing a unique opportunity to explore PCNT function in MOPD II. To model PCNTΔK3154, we examined the effects of Drosophila Pericentrin-like protein (PLP) carrying an orthologous deletion (plpΔR). Our results show that plpΔR animals exhibit developmental delay and smaller tissues that recapitulate MOPD II phenotypes. Behavioral assays revealed defects in gravitaxis and mechanosensation, suggesting impaired sensory cilia function. We also find that plpΔR cells exhibit accelerated mitosis, increased apoptosis, and reduced pericentriolar material recruitment. In silico structural modeling, yeast two-hybrid, and co-immunoprecipitation experiments show that plpΔR produces a protein that disrupts PLP dimerization, and its interaction with Asterless, another centrosome protein. Overall, modeling the human MOPD II patient variant, PCNTΔK3154 in Drosophila reveals how a single amino acid deletion affects biological processes from the molecular level to the organismal level. Our work offers new insights into the defective cellular mechanisms underlying MOPD II in patients with the PCNTΔK3154 variant, potentially linking the etiology of this disease to the loss of a single protein-protein interaction