Figure 1

Primary medulloblastoma specimens and medulloblastoma cell lines overexpress TAp73 and ΔNp73 RNA species relative to TP53. (A) TP73 gene and relative location of isoform-specific primers for qRT-RTPCR of TP73. Exons are depicted as boxes with overlying arrows corresponding to location of primers for PCR. (B) Established medulloblastoma cell lines, Daoy and D283MED (D283), and human adult cerebellum (Cbl) express high levels of TAp73 and amino-terminal splice variants encoding ΔNp73 in comparison to human fetal brain. Primary medulloblastoma (MB) samples from patients (n = 34) display similar overexpression of TAp73 and ΔNp73 RNA species. (C) Primary medulloblastoma samples from patients (n = 34) display overexpression of TAp73 and amino-terminal truncated TP73 RNA variants, relative to human fetal brain and normalized to GAPDH expression. By comparison, TP53 RNA is relatively underexpressed. Total ΔNp73 represents the sum of expression of all amino-terminal-truncated TP73 RNA variants (ΔNp73, ΔN'p73, ΔEx2p73, and ΔEx2/3p73). Columns, mean expression of at least 2 experiments; error bars, ± S.E.M. Y-axis, RNA expression relative to human fetal brain and normalized to GAPDH expression (N.B. log-scale).