| First Author | Birkenmeier CS | Year | 2003 |
| Journal | Hematol J | Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 6 | Pages | 445-9 |
| PubMed ID | 14671619 | Mgi Jnum | J:103074 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:3608432 | Doi | 10.1038/sj.thj.6200307 |
| Citation | Birkenmeier CS, et al. (2003) Normoblastosis, a murine model for ankyrin-deficient hemolytic anemia, is caused by a hypomorphic mutation in the erythroid ankyrin gene Ank1. Hematol J 4(6):445-9 |
| abstractText | Ankyrin deficiency is one of the most common causes of hereditary spherocytosis in humans. A spontaneous mutation, normoblastosis (Ank1nb), discovered in 1969 in a mouse stock maintained at the Jackson Laboratory, provides an important animal model for these human ankyrin-deficient anemias. Study of this model has led to the finding of multiple isoforms of Ank1 as well as Ank1nb-related pathology in nonerythroid tissues. To enhance the usefulness of this model, we have identified the Ank1nb mutation as the deletion of a guanosine residue in exon 36 of the erythroid ankyrin gene (Ank1). This results in a frame shift that introduces a stop 13 codons downstream and predicts a 157 kDa nb-ankyrin lacking the regulatory domain but including intact membrane- and spectrin-binding domains. By epitope scanning on immunoblots, we show that a previously reported protein (p150) found in nb reticulocytes is the predicted nb-ankyrin. Existing evidence indicates that this protein is functional, making the normoblastosis mutation a hypomorph rather than a null as originally thought. The nb-ankyrin provides an explanation for the milder phenotype displayed by nb/nb animals relative to the murine spectrin-deficient anemias, spherocytosis (Spna1(sph), Spna1(sph-1J), Spna1(sph-2BC), Spna1(sph-DEM)) and jaundiced (Spnb1(ja)), and suggests that truncated ankyrins could be useful in gene replacement therapy. |
