Relevance to Autism

SPRY2 was identified as an ASD candidate gene based on having a p-value < 0.001 following DeNovoWEST analysis of de novo variants in 16,877 ASD trios from the Simons Simplex Collection, the Autism Sequencing Consortium, the MSSNG cohort, and the SPARK cohort in Zhou et al., 2022; among the de novo variants observed in ASD cases in this analysis were two de novo loss-of-function variants.

Molecular Function

This gene encodes a protein belonging to the sprouty family. The encoded protein contains a carboxyl-terminal cysteine-rich domain essential for the inhibitory activity on receptor tyrosine kinase signaling proteins and is required for growth factor stimulated translocation of the protein to membrane ruffles. In primary dermal endothelial cells this gene is transiently upregulated in response to fibroblast growth factor two. This protein is indirectly involved in the non-cell autonomous inhibitory effect on fibroblast growth factor two signaling. The protein interacts with Cas-Br-M (murine) ectropic retroviral transforming sequence, and can function as a bimodal regulator of epidermal growth factor receptor/mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling. Taketomi et al., 2005 demonstrated that Spry2-null mice exhibited enteric nerve hypoplasia that could be corrected by administration of anti-GDNF antibodies, suggesting that Spry2 was a negative regulator of GDNF for the neonatal developm

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