Murine M7 leukemia derived from retroviral insertional mutagenesis of Gata1s fetal progenitors

The goal of this study is to derive a mouse model of human Down Syndrome (DS) megakaryocytic leukemia involving mutations in the hematopoietic transcription factor, GATA1 (called GATA1s mutation). We achieved this through transduction of Gata1s mutant fetal progenitors by MSCV-based retrovirus expressing a GFP marker, followed by in vitro selection (for immortalized cell lines), and then in vivo selection (for transformed cell lines) through transplantation. Here we report one such cell line [T6(6)] that gives rise to megakaryocytic leukemia (M7 leukemia) upon transplantation. Since the leukemic cells were retrovirally tagged with a GFP reporter, we sorted GFP+ leukemic blasts and generated their expression profiles by microarray.