title: Chromosome arm-specific long telomeres: a new clonal event in primary chronic myelogenous leukemia cells.
abstract: Previous studies demonstrated that critically shortened telomere lengths correlate with the chromosome instability in carcinogenesis. However, little has been noticed regarding the correlation of long telomeres at specific chromosomes with malignant disorders. We studied relative telomere lengths (RTLs) for individual chromosomes using the quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization technique in a cohort of 32 patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and 32 normal samples. We found that telomeres at some specific chromosome arms remain well maintained or even lengthened in a high frequency (27/32) of leukemia cases. In particular, 10 chromosome arms, 4q, 5p, 7q, 11p, 13p, 13q, 14p, 15p, 18p, and Xp, with long telomeres were consistently identified in different samples, and six of them (4q, 5p, 13p, 13q, 14p, and Xp) with relatively long telomeres were also observed in normal samples, but they appeared in lower occurrence rate and shorter RTL than in CML samples. Our results strongly indicate the presence of a special leukemia cell population, or a clone, originated from a common progenitor that is characterized with chromosome arm-specific long telomeres. We suggest that relatively long telomeres located at key chromosomes could be preferentially maintained or further elongated during the early stage of malignant transformation.
authors.affiliation: Division of Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Oumar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Samassekou
authors.forename: Huiyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Josée
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hébert
authors.forename: Aimé
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ntwari
authors.forename: Haixia
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Catherine Grenier
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Cliché
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bouchard
authors.forename: Shiang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Ju
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001483:Base Sequence; D002869:Chromosome Aberrations; D002880:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 11 / Q000235:genetics; D002884:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 15 / Q000235:genetics; D002887:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 18 / Q000235:genetics; D002897:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 7 / Q000235:genetics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D017404:In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence / Q000379:methods*; D015464:Leukemia, Myelogenous, Chronic, BCR-ABL Positive / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016615:Telomere / Q000235:genetics*; D055815:Young Adult