Expression of genes in Runx2/Myc transgenic mouse thymus compared to control. Mus musculus

Retroviral insertional mutagenesis (RIM) is a powerful tool in cancer genomics. Transgenic mice expressing two potent collaborating oncogenes in the germline, Myc and Runx2, develop rapid onset tumours that can be accelerated and rendered polyclonal by neonatal infection with MoMLV. Deep sequencing of lymphomas from infected Runx2/Myc mice revealed a network of progression genes. Transcriptional analysis of basal expression levels in transgenic cells showed that the progression network showed strong evidence of clonal selection beyond gene expression level. Overall design: We examined the gene expression profile of triplicate 10 day old thymus from CD2-Myc/CD2-Runx2 and C57/CBA mice to examine early gene changes in comparison to RIM targets in end stage tumours. We found no significant relationship between basal expression in the transgenic system and genes that were targets for retroviral integration.