Project description:The de novo DNA methyltransferases Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b are of crucial importance in hematopoietic stem cells, and Dnmt3b has recently been shown to play a role in genic methylation. Forced Dnmt3b expression induced widespread DNA hypermethylation in myc-bcl2 induced leukemias, especially at promoters and gene bodies of stem cell-related genes. MLL-AF9 induced leukemogenesis showed much less pronounced DNA hypermethylation upon Dnmt3b expression. Nonetheless, leukemogenesis was delayed in both models with a shared core set of DNA hypermethylated regions and suppression of stem cell-related genes. Our findings indicate a critical role for Dnmt3b-mediated DNA methylation in leukemia development and maintenance of LSC function.
Project description:The de novo DNA methyltransferases Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b are of crucial importance in hematopoietic stem cells, and Dnmt3b has recently been shown to play a role in genic methylation. Forced Dnmt3b expression induced widespread DNA hypermethylation in myc-bcl2 induced leukemias, especially at promoters and gene bodies of stem cell-related genes. MLL-AF9 induced leukemogenesis showed much less pronounced DNA hypermethylation upon Dnmt3b expression. Nonetheless, leukemogenesis was delayed in both models with a shared core set of DNA hypermethylated regions and suppression of stem cell-related genes. Our findings indicate a critical role for Dnmt3b-mediated DNA methylation in leukemia development and maintenance of LSC function. To investigate how Dnmt3b-mediated DNA methylation affects leukemogenesis, we analyzed leukemia development under conditions of high and physiological methylation levels in a tetracycline-inducible knockin mouse model. High expression of Dnmt3b slowed leukemia development in serial transplantations and impaired leukemia stem cell (LSC) function.
Project description:A transcriptome study in mouse hematopoietic stem cells was performed using a sensitive SAGE method, in an attempt to detect medium and low abundant transcripts expressed in these cells. Among a total of 31,380 unique transcript, 17,326 (55%) known genes were detected, 14,054 (45%) low-copy transcripts that have no matches to currently known genes. 3,899 (23%) were alternatively spliced transcripts of the known genes and 3,754 (22%) represent anti-sense transcripts from known genes.