Ecotropic Viral Integration Site 1 (EVI1)

The murine Evi1 gene encodes a protein that has multiple 28-amino acid repeats containing the consensus sequence found in the zinc finger domains of many transcriptional regulatory proteins. Activation of the expression of the Evi1 gene is frequently found in murine myeloid leukemias and leukemia cell lines and is due to retroviral insertions in the 5-prime region of the gene.By in situ hybridization with metaphase chromosomes from a patient with a 3;5 translocation, they found that the EVI1 gene was translocated to the derivative chromosome 5. However, no rearrangements were detected by Southern blot analysis and no EVI1 transcripts were detected with RNA from leukemic blasts of 1 patient with the translocation.