Superfund Research Program
Administrative Core
Project Leader: Rebecca C. Fry
Co-Investigator: Michael D. Aitken
Grant Number: P42ES005948
Funding Period: 1995-2018
Project-Specific Links
Title: Two aldehyde clearance systems are essential to prevent lethal formaldehyde accumulation in mice and humans
Accession Number: GSE157832
Link to Dataset: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE157832
Repository: Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)
Data Type(s): Gene Expression, Underlying data from publication
Experiment Type(s): Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing
Organism(s): Mus musculus
Summary: Reactive aldehydes arise as by-products of metabolism, and are normally cleared by multiple families of enzymes. We find that mice lacking two aldehyde detoxifying enzymes, mitochondrial ALDH2 and cytoplasmic ADH5, have greatly shortened lifespans and develop leukemia. Hematopoiesis is profoundly disrupted, with a reduction of hematopoietic stem cells and also common lymphoid progenitors causing a severely depleted acquired immune system. We show that formaldehyde is the common substrate of ALDH2 and ADH5, and establish methods to quantify elevated blood formaldehyde and formaldehyde-DNA adducts in tissues. Bone marrow derived progenitors actively engage DNA repair but also imprint a formaldehyde-driven mutation signature similar to ageing-associated human cancer mutation signatures. Furthermore, we identify analogous genetic defects in children causing a new inherited bone marrow failure and pre-leukemic syndrome. Endogenous formaldehyde clearance alone is therefore critical for hematopoiesis and in limiting mutagenesis in somatic tissues.
Publication(s) associated with this dataset:- Dingler FA, Wang M, Mu A, Millington CL, Oberbeck N, Watcham S, Pontel LB, Kamimae-Lanning AN, Langevin F, Nadler C, Cordell RL, Monks PS, Yu R, Wilson NK, Hira A, Yoshida K, Mori M, Okamoto Y, Okuno Y, Muramatsu H, Shiraishi Y, Kobayashi M, Moriguchi T, Osumi T, Kato M, Miyano S, Ito E, Kojima S, Yabe H, Matsuo K, Yabe M, Ogawa S, Gottgens B, Hodskinson MR, Takata M, Patel KJ. 2020. Two aldehyde clearance systems are essential to prevent lethal formaldehyde accumulation in mice and humans. Mol Cell 80(6):doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2020.10.012 PMID:33147438 PMCID:PMC7758861