Patients with
Bloom syndrome (BS) show an immunodeficiency, an enhanced sister chromatid exchanges (SCEs), a strong genetic instability and an increased predisposition to all. In order to investigate the differential expression of
BLM protein in hematopoietic
tumor cell strains and study the effects of BLM gene on ultraviolet (UV)-or
hydroxyurea (HU)-induced apoptosis, Western blot was used to detect the expression of
BLM protein in normal human bone marrow mononuclear cells and 4 kinds of hematopoietic
tumor cell strains. The 4 kinds of hematopoietic
tumor cells were exposed to UV light with a germicidal UV lamp or treated with 2 mmol/L
hydroxyurea and the apoptotic rate was detected by using AnnexinV-
FITC. The results showed that these
tumor cells expressed
BLM protein higher than the normal human bone marrow mononuclear cells (P<0.01). In the 4 hematopoietic
tumor cells,
BLM protein was all specially cleaved in response to UV-or HU-induced apoptosis. The increase of
BLM protein expression may play an important role in the development of these
tumors, and BLM proteolysis is likely to be a general feature of the apoptotic response.