The Association between PARP1 and LIG3 Expression Levels and Chromosomal Translocations in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Pashaiefar, Hossein; Yaghmaie, Marjan; Ghaffari, Seyed Hamidollah; Alimoghaddam, Kamran; Pantea, Izadi; Ghavamzadeh, Ardeshir

doi:10.22074/cellj.2018.5210

The Association between PARP1 and LIG3 Expression Levels and Chromosomal Translocations in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

² Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

³ Department of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

10.22074/cellj.2018.5210

Abstract

Objective
Chromosomal translocations are among the most common mutational events in cancer development, especially in hematologic malignancies. However, the precise molecular mechanism of these events is still not clear. It has been recently shown that alternative non-homologous end-joining (alt-NHEJ), a newly described pathway for double-stranded DNA break repair, mediates the formation of chromosomal translocations. Here, we examined the expression levels of the main components of alt-NHEJ (PARP1 and LIG3) in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients and assessed their potential correlation with the formation of chromosomal translocations.
Materials and Methods
This experimental study used reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT- qPCR) to quantify the expression levels of PARP1 and LIG3 at the transcript level in AML patients (n=78) and healthy individuals (n=19).
Results
PARP1 was the only gene overexpressed in the AML group when compared with healthy individuals (P=0.0004), especially in the poor prognosis sub-group. Both genes were, however, found to be up-regulated in AML patients with chromosomal translocations (P=0.04 and 0.0004 respectively). Moreover, patients with one isolated translocation showed an over-expression of only LIG3 (P=0.005), whereas those with two or more translocations over-expressed both LIG3 (P=0.002) and PARP1 (P=0.02).
Conclusion
The significant correlations observed between PARP1 and LIG3 expression and the rate of chromosomal translocations in AML patients provides a molecular context for further studies to investigate the causality of this association.

Keywords