Microcephaly
Gene: CECR2
PMID 41964217 reports six individuals from six unrelated families with heterozygous nonsense, frameshift or missense CECR2 variants causing a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by developmental and speech delay, growth restriction, microcephaly/small head circumference, intellectual disability and variable congenital anomalies. Other common features included gastrointestinal dysmotility, abnormal brain morphology, cardiac anomalies, ophthalmologic anomalies, and seizures/epilepsy in 3 patients. Two variants were confirmed de novo (1 missense 1 nonsense), inheritance information was no available for the other 4. All variant were either absent from gnomad v4 or had only 1 het. all missense were towards the end of the protein p.1385-1428.
PMID 37424722 9 CECR2 variants in 12 patients with neural tube defects. All variants were missense from p. 327-1023 and 5 of them had over 11 hets in gnomad. Phenotypes included anencephaly, hydrocephalus, spina bifida, atelectasis, visceral congestion and more. The paper mentions a mouse model has previous shown LOF of CECR2 results in NTDs and that high homocysteine levels could further reduce CECR2 expression. Functional analysis on 4 missense in this cohort showed reduced CECR2 protein expression on western blot for 3, exposure to homocysteine thiolactone further reduced this expression in increase apoptosis activity while folic acid supplementation counteracted CECR2 expression decline and reduced apoptosis. No inheritance information was available for these variants.
Green for the neurodevelopmental disorder, amber/red for neural tube defects similar to other genes with this association ie VANGL2.
Sources: LiteratureCreated: 12 May 2026, 11:56 a.m.
Mode of inheritance
MONOALLELIC, autosomal or pseudoautosomal, NOT imprinted
Phenotypes
Neurodevelopmental disorder, MONDO:0700092, CECR2-related; neural tube defects, susceptibility to MONDO:0020705, CECR2-related
Publications
gene: CECR2 was added gene: CECR2 was added to Microcephaly. Sources: Expert Review Green,Literature Mode of inheritance for gene: CECR2 was set to MONOALLELIC, autosomal or pseudoautosomal, NOT imprinted Publications for gene: CECR2 were set to 41964217; 37424722 Phenotypes for gene: CECR2 were set to Neurodevelopmental disorder, MONDO:0700092, CECR2-related; neural tube defects, susceptibility to MONDO:0020705, CECR2-related