Abstract
IntroductionSALL4 and BMI-1 are important factors in hematopoiesis. Placental tissue (PT) and umbilical cord blood (CB) are rich in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSCs/HPCs), but their SALL4 and BMI-1 expression levels remain unknown.MethodsReal-time PCR was used to determine the expression level of these genes in PT and CB from ten cases, and ten healthy donors were used as controls.ResultsA significantly higher BMI-1 and SALL4 gene expression level was found in PT (median: 17.548 and 34.362, respectively) than in cord blood mononuclear cells (CBMCs) (median: 2.071 and 11.300, respectively) (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.007) and healthy peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) (median: 0.259 and 0.384, respectively) (P = 0.001 and P <0.0001), and their expression level was lower in PBMCs than in CBMCs (P = 0.029 and P = 0.002). A positive correlation between the BMI-1 and SALL4 genes was found in the PT and CB groups, while there was no significant correlation between these genes in the healthy group. There was also no significant correlation between the expression level of each gene in PT and CB.ConclusionsThese results describe the characteristic features of the BMI-1 and SALL4 gene expression pattern in placental tissue and cord blood. Placental tissue with higher expression level of both genes may be considered as a potential resource for SALL4-related HPC expansion.
Highlights
Sal-like protein 4 (SALL4) and B cell-specific MLV integration site 1 (BMI-1) are important factors in hematopoiesis
Placental tissue (PT) and cord blood (CB) comprise rich hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs)/hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs); little is known about the difference in the expression level of SALL4 and BMI-1 in PT and CB
Little is known about the difference in the expression level of SALL4 in CB; it may be interesting to determine the expression characteristics of this gene in PT collected from the same case as the CB to compare expression pattern differences
Summary
Placental tissue (PT) and umbilical cord blood (CB) are rich in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSCs/HPCs), but their SALL4 and BMI-1 expression levels remain unknown. SALL4, a newly identified zinc-finger transcription factor that is a member of the SALL gene family, was originally cloned based on its sequence homology to Drosophila spalt (sal) [7,8]. This protein plays important roles in maintaining embryonic stem cells (ESC) pluripotency and HSC/HPC self-renewal properties, and it has been recently proposed for use in CB expansion [9]. The induction of SALL4 expression is associated with increased levels of histone H3-K4 and H3-K79 methylation in the BMI-1 promoter, indicating a novel connection between SALL4 and the polycomb group proteins [7]
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