Control of hematopoietic stem cell quiescence by the E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Fbw7

Ubiquitination is a post-translational mechanism of control of diverse cellular processes. We focus here on the ubiquitin ligase Fbw7, a recently identified hematopoietic tumor suppressor that can target for degradation several important oncogenes including Notch1, c-Myc and cyclin E. We have generated conditional Fbw7 knock-out animals and inactivated the gene in hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and their differentiated progeny. Deletion of Fbw7 specifically and rapidly affects the HSC compartment in a cell-autonomous manner. Fbw7-/- HSCs show defective maintenance of quiescence, leading to impaired self-renewal and a severe loss of competitive repopulating capacity. Furthermore, Fbw7-/- HSC are unable to colonize the thymus leading to a profound depletion of T cell progenitors. Deletion of Fbw7 in bone marrow stem cells and progenitors leads to the stabilization of c-Myc, a transcription factor previously implicated in HSC self-renewal. On the other hand, neither Notch1 nor cyclin E are stabilized in the bone marrow of Fbw7 deficient mice. Genome-wide transcriptome studies of Fbw7-/- HSC and hematopoietic progenitors indicate that Fbw7 controls, through the regulation of HSC cell cycle entry, the global transcriptional “signature” that is associated with the quiescent, self-renewing HSC phenotype. Transcriptional consequences of inactivating Fbw7 in LKS cells. Keywords: cell type comparison Four samples were analyzed: wild-type (WT) control and Fbw7-deficient (FBW7) Lin-ckit+Sca1+ (LSK) cells, as well as Lin-ckit+Sca1- myeloid progenitor (MP) cells, which served as a control for LSK-enriched/specific genes. Total bone marrow cells were pooled from three WT and three FBW7 mice before sorting LSK and MP populations.