Retroviral insertional mutagenesis screen in a C/EBPalpha proliferative genetic background
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: The CCAAT enhancer binding protein alpha (C/EBPalpha) transcription factor plays a key role in the regulation of growth and differentiation of the granulocytic lineage in the hematopoietic system and CEBPA (encoding C/EBPalpha) is often mutated or deregulated in AML patients. Consistently, mice lacking C/EBPalpha have no mature neutrophils and die within a few hours. However, homozygous knockin mice in which wild type Cebpa has been replaced with a mutant allele (BRM2), which abolish the growth-repressing ability of C/EBPalpha, are viable, but at 8 weeks of age they display myeloid dysplasia with absence of neutrophil granulocytes. Strikingly, in older CebpaBRM2/BRM2 knockin mice the myeloid dysplastic phenotype progress into other myeloid malignancies such as myeloid proliferative syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia-like malignancy. This strongly suggests that secondary mutations in other loci must occur when developing leukemia in the CebpaBRM2/BRM2. In order to identify genes that cooperate with Cebpa mutations in the development of leukemia in CebpaBRM2/BRM2 mice a so-called retroviral insertion mutagenesis screen was performed. Inbred newborn CebpaBRM2/BRM2 and wildtype mice were injected with SRS19-6 retrovirus, which incorporated into the genome and resulted in activation of oncogenes and leukemic progression. When leukemia was evident the mice were euthanized and analyzed. As expected the CebpaBRM2/BRM2 mice had a shorter latency than wildtype mice (186 vs. 276 days). The mice had enlarged spleen, thymus, and/or lymph nodes and were thoroughly investigated by histology, flow cytometry and southern in order to determine the leukemic phenotypes. Most of the CebpaBRM2/BRM2 mice developed an AML-like phenotype, whereas T cell leukemias were most prominent in wildtype mice, showing that mutating Cebpa specifically directs leukemic progression towards a myeloid direction. Genomic instability was analyzed by CGH. Finally, the retroviral insertion loci were identified through a splinkerette-aided PCR strategy. This led to the identification of several novel putative and previously unexplored oncogenes, which might collaborate with mutated Cebpa in the development of AML. Keywords: Disease state analysis
ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus
PROVIDER: GSE8032 | GEO | 2008/06/01
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA100843
REPOSITORIES: GEO
ACCESS DATA