AML1a Gene Expression And Its Significance In Acute Leukemia.

Acute leukemia is an aggressive malignancy that generally leads to a poor outcome. Disturbing expression of transcription factor plays an important role in both leukemogenesis and development. AML 1 is a pivotal transcription factor in both embryogenesis and hematopoiesis. AML 1 gene abnormalities, including both chromosome translocation and mutation (point mutation, insertion, deletion mutation, et al), which lead to the lost of transcript activation, are general in acute leukemia. AML1 gene transcription may develop three different transcripts, AML1a, AML1b and AML1c through alternative splicing. AML1a is the shortest transcript whose translation product has no transcriptional activation domain in the C-terminal region. Since it has a higher affinity to DNA than AML1b and suppresses transcriptional activation by AML1b, AML1a may act as a negative regulator.There was still no report on the AML 1 a expression in de novo acute leukemia, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphocytic leukemia(ALL) , hybrid leukemia and so on. Our purpose was to investigate the AML1a gene expression level and its clinical significance in acute leukemia. AML1a transcripts were determined by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (semi-quantitative RT-PCR) method in patients with acute leukemia and...