RESUMO
Transcriptional silencing of subtelomeric genes is associated with telomere length, which is correlated with age. Long and short telomeres in young and old people, respectively, coincide with gene repression and activation in each case. In addition, differential location of genes with respect to telomeres causes telomere position effect. There is very little evidence of the manner in which age-related telomere length affects the expression of specific human subtelomeric genes. We analyzed the relationship between telomere length and gene expression levels in fibroblasts derived from human donors at ages ranging from 0-70 years. We studied three groups of genes located between 100 and 150 kb, 200 and 250 kb, and > 300 kb away from telomeres. We found that the chromatin modifier-encoding genes Eu-HMTase1, ZMYND11, and RASA3 were overexpressed in adults. Our results suggest that short telomere length-related overexpression of chromatin modifiers could underlie transcriptional changes contributing to cellular senescence.
Assuntos
Senescência Celular/genética , Expressão Gênica , Telômero , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Sequência de Bases , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Primers do DNA , Humanos , Lactente , Recém-Nascido , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Reação em Cadeia da Polimerase , Adulto Jovem , beta-Galactosidase/genéticaRESUMO
Cell differentiation and four WT1 isoforms were assessed in CD34(+) cells from patients with acute myelogenous leukemia in presence or absence of recombinant human GM-CSF and G-CSF, on days 0, 10 and 20 of culture. We found that WT1 isoforms expression was consistently higher in AML-derived CD34+ cell-enriched cell fractions, as compared to their normal counterparts, and interestingly, in both cases, cells had differentiation towards the myeloid lineage with WT1 expression different patterns. This data suggest that WT1 expression seems to be modulated by the presence of cytokines, especially on day 20 of culture.