Analysis of expression levels of genes on chromosome 19 in U937 cells expressing AML1/ETO

Approximately 20% of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) cases carry the t(8;21) translocation, which involves the AML1 and ETO genes, and express the resulting AML1/ETO fusion protein that functions as a transcriptional repressor by recruiting NCoR/SMRT/HDAC complexes to DNA. We used ChIP-chip to identify the determinants of AML1/ETO binding on a contiguous DNA region (chromosome 19). In order to correlate transcription factor binding to gene expression, we evaluated expression levels of genes localized on chromosome 19 by expression tiling. Keywords: Gene expression A U937 cell line that conditionally expresses HA-tagged AML1/ETO under the control of the mouse metallothionine promoter (U937-A1E) (Alcalay et al., J.Clin.Invest, 2003,112, 1751-1761) was used. A cell line carrying the empty vector was used as control. Cell lines were treated for 8h with 100uM ZnSO4 to induce transgene expression in U937-A1E. For each of the U937 cell lines (AML1/ETO and Mt), three independent RNA extractions were performed, and an equal quantity of each of the three RNA preparations was then mixed to generate an RNA pool for each sample.