Transcription profiling of mouse activated or control 5-FU bone marrow from MLL-AF4stop knockins

We created a mouse model where conditional expression of physiologic levels of an Mll-AF4 fusion oncogene induces development of acute lymphoblastic (ALL) or acute myeloid leukemias (AML). Immunophenotypic and gene expression analysis of the ALL cells demonstrated bone marrow replacement with B-precursor cells which express a gene expression profile that has significant overlap with profiles in human MLL-rearranged ALL. To examine early, pre-leukemic changes in lymphoid cells due to Mll-AF4 expression, we infected 5-FU bone marrow cells from Mll-AF4stop knocking mice with activating (Cre-GFP) or control (MIF-GFP) retrovirus ex vivo and measured expression changes after culture under lymphoid growth conditions. Experiment Overall Design: Mll-AF4stop knock-in mice were treated with 5-FU and 5 days later their bone marrow infected ex vivo with either Cre-GFP to activate the Mll-AF4 fusion construct or with a control MIG-Cre retrovirus. GFP+ cells were sorted 2 days post-infection and cultured for 14 days under lymphoid growth conditions before total RNA was isolated for hybridization to Affymetrix expression microarrays.