Haploinsufficiency of Dnmt1 impairs leukemia stem cell function through derepression of bivalent chromatin domains.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-15-2012

Keywords

Animals, Chromatin, DNA (Cytosine-5-)-Methyltransferase, DNA Methylation, Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic, Gene Knockout Techniques, Haploinsufficiency, Kaplan-Meier Estimate, Leukemia, Mice, Neoplastic Stem Cells, Tumor Suppressor Proteins

JAX Source

Genes Dev 2012 Feb 15; 26(4):344-9.

PMID

22345515

Volume

26

Issue

4

First Page

344

Last Page

349

ISSN

1549-5477

Abstract

Epigenetic mechanisms regulating leukemia stem cells (LSCs) are an attractive target for therapy of blood cancers. Here, we report that conditional knockout of the DNA methyltransferase Dnmt1 blocked development of leukemia, and haploinsufficiency of Dnmt1 was sufficient to delay progression of leukemogenesis and impair LSC self-renewal without altering normal hematopoiesis. Haploinsufficiency of Dnmt1 resulted in tumor suppressor gene derepression associated with reduced DNA methylation and bivalent chromatin marks. These results suggest that LSCs depend on not only active expression of leukemogenic programs, but also DNA methylation-mediated silencing of bivalent domains to enforce transcriptional repression.

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