Using two probes located on either side of the cloned breakpoint, we have found genomic rearrangements of one or other locus in six patients out of eight, demonstrating that the RAR alpha and/or myl genes are frequently rearranged in APL and the breakpoints are clustered.
The translocation t(15;17) associated with acute promyelocytic leukemia results in the fusion of the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARA) gene to the PML gene.
We have previously shown that the t(15;17) translocation specifically associated with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) fuses the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR alpha) locus to an as yet unknown gene, initially called myl and now renamed PML.
A unique mRNA produced in leukemic cells from a t(15;17) acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) patient encodes a fusion protein between the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR alpha) and a myeloid gene product called PML.
Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is due to a chromosomal t(15;17) translocation which involves a novel human gene, Myl, (also named PML) and the retinoic acid (RA) receptor alpha (RAR-alpha) gene.
Neither the choice of PML intron nor the expression of the 17q- derivative could be correlated with the microgranular variant of APL (M3V), overall survival rate, age, sex or presence of coagulopathy.
These findings indicate that two potential oncogenic proteins are generated by the t(15;17) and suggest that the PML activation pathway is altered in APLs.
We investigated the organization and expression pattern of the RAR alpha-PML gene in a series of APL patients representative of the molecular heterogeneity of the t(15;17) and found (i) two types of RAR alpha-PML mRNA junctions (RAR alpha exon 2/PML exon 4 or RAR alpha exon 2/PML exon 7) that maintain the RAR alpha and PML longest open reading frames aligned and are the result of chromosome 15 breaking at two different sites; and (ii) 10 different RAR alpha-PML fusion transcripts that differ for the assembly of their PML coding exons.
Molecular rearrangements of the MYL gene in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL, M3) define a breakpoint cluster region as well as some molecular variants.
To investigate leukemogenesis of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), we studied the involvements of retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR alpha) and myl genes, and also the frequency of N-RAS, K-RAS, H-RAS, and FMS point mutations in sixteen patients with APL.
The acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL)-specific chromosome 15;17 translocation leads to the fusion of a newly identified putative transcription factor, PML, and the retinoic acid receptor alpha.
The characteristic t(15;17) of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) fuses the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-alpha) gene on chromosome 17 to a gene on chromosome 15 called PML, a putative transcription factor.
This observation, which highlights the importance of PML, is likely to be a key to unravelling the molecular mechanism of both leukemogenesis and RA-induced differentiation of APL.
Chromosome translocation t(15;17) specifically found in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) results in cleavage in the introns of PML gene on chromosome 15 and in the intron of the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR alpha) gene on chromosome 17, creation and expression of PML-RAR alpha and RAR alpha-PML fusion genes.
Fusion proteins (named PMLRAR) between PML and the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR alpha) are generated as a result of the t(15;17) chromosomal translocation found in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).
Acute promyelocytic leukemia is characterized by a 15;17 chromosome translocation with breakpoints within the retinoic acid alpha receptor (RAR alpha) gene on 17 and the PML gene, which encodes a putative transcription factor, on 15.
The translocation, which is balanced and reciprocal, leads to the formation of two fusion genes, PML/RAR alpha and RAR alpha/PML.Both are expressed in APL.