Research Article

Lymphoid Progenitor Cells from Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Are Functionally Deficient and Express High Levels of the Transcriptional Repressor Gfi-1

Figure 4

The transcriptional repressor growth factor independence-1 (Gfi-1) is highly expressed in progenitor cells from leukemic individuals. A number of transcription factors and cell cycle genes, including p21, FOXO3A, c-Myc, Bcl2, Gfi-1, PTEN, p53, Bmi, and p19, were investigated by real time RT-PCR in LinCD34+ cells from ALL BM, and their expression values normalized to control cells (a). The protein production of the transcriptional repressor Gfi-1 (45 kDa) was demonstrated in both nuclear and total extracts from ALL CD34+ cells by Western blotting. As loading control protein and as nuclear protein marker, α-actin (43 kDa) and LaminB1 (67 kDa) were included, respectively (b). Immunocytochemistry approach showed the highest protein expression of Gfi-1 in precursor CD34+ cells (c), where the nuclear location was confirmed by immunofluorescence microscopy (d).
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(d)