Poster Presentation 28th Lorne Cancer Conference 2016

The Role of Scribble in Erythropoiesis and Terminal Erythroid Differentiation (#295)

Kalpana Sivakumar 1 , Patrick Humbert 1
  1. Cell Cycle and Cancer Genetics Laboratory, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Erythropoiesis is the development of red blood cells, which is constituted of multiple, irreversible steps. This process requires enucleation, the mechanisms of which are not fully understood. Enucleation occurs within haematopoetic tissues - specifically, within macrophage islands. Erythroblast enucleation is thought to be a form of asymmetric cell division (ACD), a process that requires the establishment of polarity leading to unequal distribution of proteins to daughter cells. Of particular interest to our lab, the Scribble polarity complex has been shown to be implicated in ACD. Experiments in Drosophila melanogaster show that the loss of the Scribble gene leads to deregulation and loss of ACD. In addition, studies conducted by our lab have found that changes to Scribble produces observable changes in erythropoiesis. It is hypothesised that the loss of Scribble will lead to defects in erythropoiesis and particularly, enucleation. In order to determine whether Scribble affects enucleation, I generated and characterised mice with an erythroid specific deletion of Scribble . I achieved this by conducting functional tests that compared characteristics of peripheral blood and by comparing erythropoiesis in this model to that of wild type mice. The work contained herein demonstrates that Scribble is fully dispensable in both erythropoiesis and erythroid enucleation, both under homeostatic condition and during stress erythropoiesis. By determining that Scribble is redundant in erythroid development, we have gained insight into mechanistic aspects of erythropoiesis and erythroid enucleation.