Expression profiling of the Zfpm1 knockout in mouse erythroleukemic cells

Raw sequence reads from RNAseq expression profiling of proerythroblastic mouse erythroleukemia (MEL) cells in which the Zfpm1 gene coding for Friend of GATA1(FOG -1) has been knocked out by CRISPR/Cas9. Datasets are from three independent ZFPM1 knockout clones and wild type MEL cells, at two time points: non-induced MEL cells at the proerythroblastic stage and DMSO-induced MEL cells at the polychromatic stage of terminal erythroid differentiation. FOG-1 is an essential transcriptional co-factor of the erythroid master transcription factor GATA1. The knockout of the Zfpm1 gene results in early embryonic lethality due to anemia in mice, similar to the embryonic lethal phenotype of the Gata1 gene knockout. However, the detailed molecular analysis of the Zfpm1 knockout phenotype in erythropoiesis is presently incomplete. To this end, we used CRISPR/Cas9 to knockout Zfpm1 in mouse erythroleukemic (MEL) cells. Phenotypic characterization of DMSO-induced terminal erythroid differentiation showed that the Zfpm1 knockout MEL cells did not progress past the proerythroblast stage of differentiation. Expression profiling of the Zfpm1 knockout MEL cells by RNAseq showed a lack of upregulation of erythroid-related gene expression profiles and several other pathways as being affected. For more information see Roussis et al. [citation].