Oncogene database

4330

MN1

meningioma (disrupted in balanced translocation) 1;MN1;meningioma (disrupted in balanced translocation) 1

meningioma (translocation balanced)|meningioma chromosome region 1|probable tumor suppressor protein MN1

22q12.1

protein-coding

The t(12;22) creates an MN1-TEL fusion gene leading to acute myeloid leukemia. The fusion partner TEL (ETV6) is a member of the ETS family of transcription factors. The nature of the other fusion partner, MN1, has not been investigated in detail until now. We recently described that MN1 activates the transcription activity of the moloney sarcoma virus long terminal repeat, indicating that this protein itself may act as a transcription factor. We show here that MN1 comprises multiple transcription activating domains. A search for a bound DNA sequence revealed that MN1 has affinity for retinoic acid responsive elements. A DR5 retinoic acid responsive element was observed in the LTR. The combination of MN1 and ligand-activated retinoic acid receptor leads to a synergistic induction of expression directed by the LTR. Cotransfection of MN1 with RAC3 or p300, known coactivators of retinoic acid receptors, leads to a further synergistic induction of transcription. In addition, the effect of MN1 can be inhibited by the wild-type adenovirus ElA protein that inhibits p300 function, but not by an E1A mutant lacking the p300-binding site. GAL4-MN1-mediated transcription can be enhanced directly by RAC3 and p300. Taken together, our results indicate that MN1 is a transcription coactivator rather than a sequence-specific transcription factor, and that it may stimulate RAR/RXR-mediated transcription through interaction with p160 and p300.

Fusion of the MN1 gene to TEL (ETV6) results in myeloid leukemia. The fusion protein combines the transcription activating domain of MN1 and the DNA binding domain of TEL and is thought to act as a deranged transcription factor. In addition, disruption of the large first exon of the MN1 gene is thought to inactivate MN1 function in a meningioma. To further investigate the role of MN1 in cancer, we generated Mn1 knockout mice. Mn1(+/-) animals were followed for 30 months, but they had no higher incidence of tumor formation than wild-type littermates. Mn1 null mice, however, were found to die at birth or shortly thereafter as the result of a cleft palate. Investigation of newborn or embryonic day 15.5 (E15.5) to E17.5 null mice revealed that the development of several bones in the skull was abnormal. The affected bones are almost exclusively formed by intramembranous ossification. They are either completely agenic at birth (alisphenoid and squamosal bones and vomer), hypoplastic, deformed (basisphenoid, pterygoid, and presphenoid), or substantially thinner (frontal, parietal, and interparietal bones). In heterozygous mice hypoplastic membranous bones and incomplete penetrance of the cleft palate were observed. We conclude that Mn1 is an important factor in development of membranous bones.

The MN1-TEL (meningioma 1-translocation-ETS-leukemia) fusion oncoprotein is the product of the t(12;22)(p13;q11) in human myeloid leukemia consisting of N-terminal MN1 sequences, a transcriptional coactivator, fused to C-terminal TEL sequences, an E26-transformation-specific (ETS) transcription factor. To analyze the role of MN1-TEL in leukemogenesis, we created a site-directed transgenic (knock-in) mouse model carrying a conditional MN1-TEL transgene under the control of the Aml1 regulatory sequences. After induction, MN1-TEL expression was detected in both myeloid and lymphoid cells. Activation of MN1-TEL expression enhanced the repopulation ability of myeloid progenitors in vitro as well as partially inhibited their differentiation in vivo. MN1-TEL also promoted the proliferation of thymocytes while it blocked their differentiation from CD4-/CD8- to CD4+/CD8+ in vivo. After long latency, 30% of the MN1-TEL-positive mice developed T-lymphoid tumors. This process was accelerated by N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea-induced mutations. MN1-TEL-positive T-lymphoid tumors showed elevated expression of the Notch-1, Hes-1, c-Myc, and Lmo-2 genes while their Ink4a/pRB and Arf/p53 pathways were impaired, suggesting that these alterations cooperatively transform T progenitors. We conclude that MN1-TEL exerts its nonlineage-specific leukemogenic effects by promoting the growth of primitive progenitors and blocking their differentiation, but cooperative mutations are necessary to fully induce leukemic transformation.

The IGF-binding protein (IGFBP) family consists of six proteins that are expressed and secreted in different tissues. The proteins are regulators of physiological processes throughout the body by modulating the activity of IGF-I and IGF-II. In this article, we describe the coordinated expression of IGFBP5 and MN1 in meningiomas. MN1 is a transcriptional co-activator and we show that MN1 stimulates the IGFBP5 promoter in Hep3B cells. A CACCC-containing sequence, located 140 bp upstream of the transcription start site of the promoter, is required for MN1 action. This sequence matches with the CACCCAC consensus sequence that was selected in an oligonucleotide selection assay performed for MN1. The CACCC element has also been shown to be important for induction of the IGFBP5 promoter by retinoic acid (RA) and progesterone (Pg). We were unable to confirm the effect of Pg on the promoter in Hep3B and U2-osteosarcoma cells regardless of the presence of MN1. On the other hand, we show that induction of the promoter by RA depends on co-expressed MN1 in Hep3B cells. MN1TEL, a leukemia-related fusion protein containing parts of the MN1 and TEL (ETV6) genes, is capable of stimulating the IGFBP5 promoter but is unable to cooperate with RA in Hep3B cells. This suggests that the effects of RA can be negatively affected in leukemias caused by MN1TEL.

Overexpression of wild-type MN1 is a negative prognostic factor in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with normal cytogenetics. We evaluated whether MN1 plays a functional role in leukemogenesis. We demonstrate using retroviral gene transfer and bone marrow (BM) transplantation that MN1 overexpression rapidly induces lethal AML in mice. Insertional mutagenesis and chromosomal instability were ruled out as secondary aberrations. MN1 increased resistance to all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA)-induced cell-cycle arrest and differentiation by more than 3000-fold in vitro. The differentiation block could be released by fusion of a transcriptional activator (VP16) to MN1 without affecting the ability to immortalize BM cells, suggesting that MN1 blocks differentiation by transcriptional repression. We then evaluated whether MN1 expression levels in patients with AML (excluding M3-AML) correlated with resistance to ATRA treatment in elderly patients uniformly treated within treatment protocol AMLHD98-B. Strikingly, patients with low MN1 expression who received ATRA had a significantly prolonged event-free (P = .008) and overall (P = .04) survival compared with patients with either low MN1 expression and no ATRA, or high MN1 expression with or without ATRA. MN1 is a unique oncogene in hematopoiesis that both promotes proliferation/self-renewal and blocks differentiation, and may become useful as a predictive marker in AML treatment.

Retroviral expression of leukemogenic oncogenes in the murine hematopoietic system is essential but not sufficient to induce acute leukemia. Proviral integration-mediated elevated expression of the meningioma 1 (MN1) oncogene suggested MN1 acting as cooperating event in mixed-lineage leukemia 1 (MLL) and eleven nineteen leukemia (ENL)-induced murine leukemia. Indeed, co-expression of MN1 with MLL-ENL enhanced transformation in vivo, and resulted in a significantly reduced latency for induction of an aggressive acute leukemia when compared with MN1 or MLL-ENL alone. In addition, co-expression of MN1 increased the granulocyte macrophage progenitor cell population with leukemia-initiating properties as shown in secondary transplantation experiments. Gene expression profiling experiments identified putative downstream MN1 targets, of which FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) and CD34 were upregulated in both MN1-overexpressing murine leukemias and in pediatric acute leukemias with high MN1 levels. Interestingly, small interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated MN1 knockdown resulted in cell cycle arrest and impaired clonogenic growth of human leukemia cell lines with high MN1 levels. Our work shows for the first time that high MN1 levels are important for the growth of leukemic cells, and that increased MN1 expression can synergize with MLL-ENL and probably other transforming fusion genes in leukemia induction through a distinct gene expression program that is able to expand the leukemia-initiating cell population.

Extensive molecular profiling of leukemias and preleukemic diseases has revealed that distinct clinical entities, like acute myeloid (AML) and T-lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), share similar pathogenetic mutations. It is not well understood how the cell of origin, accompanying mutations, extracellular signals or structural differences in a mutated gene determine the phenotypic identity of leukemias. We dissected the functional aspects of different protein regions of the MN1 oncogene and their effect on the leukemic phenotype, building on the ability of MN1 to induce leukemia without accompanying mutations. We found that the most C-terminal region of MN1 was required to block myeloid differentiation at an early stage, and deletion of an extended C-terminal region resulted in loss of myeloid identity and cell differentiation along the T-cell lineage in vivo. Megakaryocytic/erythroid lineage differentiation was blocked by the N-terminal region. In addition, the N-terminus was required for proliferation and leukemogenesis in vitro and in vivo through upregulation of HoxA9, HoxA10 and Meis2. Our results provide evidence that a single oncogene can modulate cellular identity of leukemic cells based on its active gene regions. It is therefore likely that different mutations in the same oncogene may impact cell fate decisions and phenotypic appearance of malignant diseases.