The severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and the more benign Becker type (BMD) are allelic conditions, controlled by a defective gene at Xp21, caused by the absence (DMD) or a defect in quantity or quality (BMD) of the protein dystrophin.
Mutations that cause premature stop codons in the dystrophin gene lead to a complete loss of dystrophin from skeletal muscle, resulting in severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Mutations in the DMD gene result in two common phenotypes associated with progressive muscle weakness: the more severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and the milder Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD).
However, nonsense mutations in the DMD gene, encoding the dystrophin protein, have been associated with both the severe Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and milder Becker Muscular Dystrophy (BMD) phenotypes.
Dystrophinopathies, either the severe Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) or the milder Becker Muscular Dystrophy (BMD), are X-linked recessive disorders caused by mutations in the DMD gene.DMD is one of the longest human genes.
Substitutions, deletions and duplications in the dystrophin gene lead to either the severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) or mild Becker muscular dystrophy depending on whether out-of-frame or in-frame transcripts are produced.
Mutations in the <i>DMD</i> gene disrupting the reading frame prevent dystrophin production and result in severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD); in-frame internal deletions allow production of partly functional internally deleted dystrophin and result in less severe Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD).
Among them, dystrophin strengthens the sarcolemma through protein-lipid interactions, and its absence due to gene mutations leads to the severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy.