The HOX family of homeobox genes plays an important role in normal and malignant hematopoiesis. Dysregulated HOX gene expression profoundly effects the proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and committed progenitors, and aberrant activation of HOX genes is a common event in human myeloid leukemia. HOXB6 is frequently overexpressed in human acute myeloid leukemia (...

Leukemia stem cells (LSC) are resistant to conventional chemotherapy and persistent LSC after chemotherapy are supposed to be a major cause of relapse. However, information on genetic or epigenetic regulation of stem cell properties is still limited and LSC-targeted drugs have scarcely been identified. Epigenetic regulators are associated with many cellular processes including maintenance of st...

Parameter optimization coupled with model selection is a convenient approach to infer gene regulatory networks from experimental gene expression data, but so far it has been limited to single cells or static tissues where growth is not significant. Here, we present a computational study in which we determine an optimal gene regulatory network from the spatiotemporal dynamics of gene expression ...

Neural precursors in the developing olfactory epithelium (OE) give rise to three major neuronal classes - olfactory receptor (ORNs), vomeronasal (VRNs) and gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons. Nevertheless, the molecular and proliferative identities of these precursors are largely unknown. We characterized two precursor classes in the olfactory epithelium (OE) shortly after it becomes...

The t(1;19) chromosomal translocation of pediatric pre-B cell leukemia produces chimeric oncoprotein E2a-Pbx1, which contains the N-terminal transactivation domain of the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, E2a, joined to the majority of the homeodomain protein, Pbx1. There are three Pbx family members, which bind DNA as heterodimers with both broadly expressed Meis/Prep1 homeo-...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to play important roles in physiological as well as multiple malignant processes, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML). In an effort to gain further insight into the role of miRNAs in AML, we have applied the Illumina massively parallel sequencing platform to carry out an in-depth analysis of the miRNA transcriptome in a murine leukemia progression model. Th...

Enhancers are developmentally controlled transcriptional regulatory regions whose activities are modulated through histone modifications or histone variant deposition. In this study, we show by genome-wide mapping that the newly discovered deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) modification 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) is dynamically associated with transcription factor binding to distal regulatory site...

Platelet factor 4 (PF4) is expressed during megakaryocytic differentiation. We previously demonstrated that the homeodomain proteins (myeloid ecotropic integration site 1 [MEIS1], Pbx-regulating protein 1 [PREP1], and pre-B-cell leukemia transcription factors [PBXs]) bind to the novel regulatory element tandem repeat of MEIS1 binding element [TME] and transactivate the rat PF4 promoter. In the ...