The myb oncogene

The highly conserved, single copy c-myb gene has been independently transduced by two avian acute leukemia viruses, AMV and E26. This gene has also undergone insertional mutagenesis by non-acutely transforming murine leukemia viruses in a number of hematopoietic tumors. The common denominator of these retroviral activations of c-myb appears to be truncation of the normal coding region at either or both ends. The role of point mutations in myb-induced leukemogenesis is currently unknown. The products of the c-myb gene and its altered viral counterparts are nuclear proteins, a large fraction of which are associated with the nuclear matrix. In addition, the myb gene products have short half-lives and bind DNA in vitro. These features suggest that myb may act by regulating DNA replication or transcription. Consistent with this notion, the expression of c-myb is cell cycle dependent in several cell types. However, the abundant expression of c-myb in the thymus is not similarly regulated and may serve a different function. The expression of c-myb appears not to be limited to hematopoietic tissues as previously thought and the nature of the hematopoietic specificity of transformation by v-myb is not currently understood. Nevertheless, hematopoietic growth factors and their receptors appear to play an important role in such transformation. Two new experimental systems for studying myb have recently been described. First, the discovery of a myb-related gene in Drosophila should allow the application of powerful classical and molecular genetic approaches. The functional similarity of this distantly related gene to the much more closely related avian and mammalian myb genes is unknown. Second, recent studies of murine myb in normal and abnormal hematopoiesis offers several advantages relative to the avian system, such as in-bred animal strains, a wealth of specific cell-surface markers, and cloned hematopoietic growth factor and receptor genes. Isolation or construction of an acutely transforming murine myb retrovirus may thus be very useful. Several obvious goals for future research will be to define the function of myb proteins within the nucleus, to understand the regulation of myb expression during the cell cycle, to establish which molecular alterations are essential for converting c-myb into a transforming gene, and the determine the role of myb in human malignancies.