Ribosomal protein S19 expression during erythroid differentiation

The gene encoding ribosomal protein S19 (RPS19) has been shown to be mutated in 25 % of the patients affected by Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA), a congenital erythroblastopenia. As the role of RPS19 in erythropoiesis is still to be defined, we performed studies on RPS19 expression during terminal erythroid differentiation. Comparative analysis of the genomic se-quences of human and mouse RPS19 genes enabled the identification of 4 con-served sequence elements in the 5 re-gion. Characterization of transcriptional elements allowed the identification of the promoter in the human RPS19 gene and the localization of a strong regulatory element in the third conserved sequence element. By Northern blot and Western blot analyses of murine splenic erythro-blasts infected with the anemia-inducing strain Friend virus (FAV cells), RPS19 mRNA and protein expression were shown to decrease during terminal ery-throid differentiation. We anticipate that these findings will contribute to further development of our understanding of the contribution of RPS19 to erythropoiesis