Project description:The goal of this experiment is to determine the expression levels of the genes that are influenced by the downregulation of plek2. TER119 negative mouse fetal liver erythroblasts were purified and infected with control and plek2 shRNA retroviruses and cultured in Epo free medium for 24 hours followed by Epo medium for 24 hours. Microarray gene expression profile analysis was performed using an Illumina platform with a biological triplicate of the same experiment.
Project description:We identified genes expressed in mouse liver that are regulated by Cux2, a highly female-specific liver transcription factor whose expression is regulated by sex-dependent plasma GH patterns. Using siRNA to knockdown Cux2 expression in female liver, we show that female specific genes are predominantly repressed by Cux2 knockdown. In contrast, similar numbers of male-biased genes are repressed as are induced by Cux2 knockdown. A scrambled, non-specific siRNA was used as a control. (Published in: TL Conforto et al 2012, Mol Cell Biol. 2012, 32:4611-4627. PubMed PMID: 22966202; PMCID: PMC3486175)
Project description:The fetal hemoglobin (HbF) levels were 95.4 ± 1.5% and 4.4 ± 0.2% in fetal liver-derived and adult blood derived-cultured erythrocytes (n=5), respectively. Following RNA isolation from the CD71 high/GPA positive erythroblasts, gene expression analyses were performed using Affymetrix Human Gene 2.0 ST Array. The Affymetrix raw data files of microarray were preprocessed using robust multi-array average method for background correction, log-transformation, and quantile normalization. Differential gene expression between fetal liver derived- and adult peripheral blood derived-erythroblasts was determined using moderated t-statistics implemented in the Limma package. We found the 1366 genes were upregulated by more than 1.5-fold change with adjusted p-value less than 0.05 in fetal liver derived-erythroblasts.
Project description:Tropomodulins (Tmods) cap the pointed ends of actin filaments in erythroid and nonerythoid cell types. Targeted deletion of mouse Tmod3 leads to embryonic lethality at E14.5-E18.5, with anemia due to defects in definitive erythropoiesis in the fetal liver. BFU-E and CFU-E colony numbers are greatly reduced, indicating defects in progenitor populations. Flow-cytometry of fetal liver erythroblasts shows late stage populations are also decreased, including reduced percentages of enucleated cells. AnnexinV staining indicates increased apoptosis of Tmod3-/- erythroblasts, and cell cycle analysis reveals that there are more Ter119hi cells in S-phase in Tmod3-/- embryos. Notably, enucleating Tmod3-/- erythroblasts are still in the process of proliferation, suggesting impaired cell cycle exit during terminal differentiation. Tmod3-/- late erythroblasts often exhibit multi-lobular nuclear morphologies and aberrant F-actin assembly during enucleation. Furthermore, native erythroblastic island formation was impaired in Tmod3-/- fetal livers, with Tmod3 required in both erythroblasts and macrophages. In conclusion, disruption of Tmod3 leads to impaired definitive erythropoiesis, due to reduced progenitors, impaired erythroblastic island formation, and defective erythroblast cell cycle progression and enucleation. Tmod3-mediated actin remodeling may be required for erythroblast-macrophage adhesion, coordination of cell cycle with differentiation, and F-actin assembly and remodeling during erythroblast enucleation. Total RNAs from Tmod3+/+ and Tmod3-/- fetal livers at E14.5 were extracted and prepared for microarray analysis using the MoGene-1_0-st-v1 Affymetrix chip in the Scripps Research Microarray Core Facility. Each experiment was repeated with three independent embryos.