Using the sleeping beauty system to investigate different MLL fusion genes

The MLL recombinome has expanded to 73 fusion partners over the last years (Meyer et al., 2009). Most of these MLL fusions have never been functionally tested. In addition, about 20% of patients display complex MLL rearrangements involving 3 or 4 recombination partner genes. This led to a collection of nearly 100 reciprocal MLL fusions that have been identified at our diagnostic center. Here we present our preliminary data on our systematic approach to functionally characterize yet unknown direct and reciprocal MLL fusion genes. For the purpose of our studies we have developed an universal vector system for dire…