Characterization of Mouse Fv5 Locus and its Role in Stress Erythropoiesis
Open Access
- Author:
- Wolf, Jennifer Lillian
- Area of Honors:
- Biology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Robert F. Paulson, Thesis Supervisor
Richard Cyr, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Stress erythropoiesis
Friend virus susceptibility gene 5 - Abstract:
- Stress erythropoiesis is a pathway distinct from normal erythropoiesis that is induced during periods of acute anemia in order to increase the production of red blood cells. A distinct population of erythroid progenitor cells in the spleen rapidly expands and differentiates, utilizing this pathway during the survival and recovery from blood loss, anemia, and therapeutic procedures. Friend virus infects the progenitor cells of the stress erythropoiesis pathway, resulting in erythroleukemia, and so it is commonly used to study stress erythropoiesis. Two progenitor cells may be infected: one is more immature and induces the formation of leukemia stem cells (LCSs: m34+Kit+Sca1+), and the other is more mature and leads to the production of stress burst forming units-erythroid (BFU-Es: m34+Kit+Sca1-). This study was interested in the relative percentages of LSCs and BFU-Es in order to determine a distinct difference between two strains of mice, CBA/J and DBA2/J, that carry different alleles of Friend virus susceptibility gene 5: Fv5-a (CBA/J) and Fv5-p (DBA2/J) 3. Fv5 regulates the production of erythrocytes following Friend virus infection. Fv5-p mice develop polycythemia while FV5-a mice develop anemia. The spleen cell populations of CBA/J and DBA2/J mice were not distinct at day 7 after Friend virus infection, but it was determined that CBA/J have more LSCs and DBA2/J spleen cells have more BFU-Es at day 14 after infection. This is also evident in cultured spleen cells from infected mice. An F1 generation (CBA/J x DBA2/J) was shown to more closely resemble DBA2/J data at day 14 after infection, indicating the dominance of the Fv5-p allele. This information will be used to genotype F2 mice (CBA/J x F1) before sending their DNA for analysis in order to map Fv5 to a chromosome.