Structural alterations of the NF-kappa B transcription factor lyt-10 in lymphoid malignancies.

We have previously reported the identification of a novel putative proto-oncogene involved in the breakpoint of a t(10;14)(q24;q32) chromosomal translocation in a case of B-cell lymphoma. This gene, called lyt-10 (NFKB2/p52), is a member of the NF-kappa B family of transcription factors and displays a high degree of homology with the NFKB1/p50. Here we describe the genomic organization of the lyt-10 gene based on the restriction analysis of genomic phage clones and the sequence determination of exon-intron boundaries. The lyt-10 gene spans a genomic region of about 8 kb on 10q24, and contains 24 exons, ranging in size between 41 and 258 base pairs. To improve the understanding of the role of lyt-10 in lymphomagenesis, we performed Southern blot analysis to detect alterations of the lyt-10 gene in a large panel of cases representative of different types of lymphoid malignancies. We found rearrangements in 5 of 228 (approximately 2%) cases analysed: two cases of B-cell lymphoma, one case of multiple myeloma and two cases of T-cell lymphoma. The use of various probes specific for different regions of the lyt-10 locus revealed that rearrangements in positive cases lead to the partial or total deletion of the carboxy-terminal region containing the ankyrin domain. Taken together, our results indicate that lyt-10 gene rearrangements represent a recurrent lesion that may be involved in the pathogenesis of both B- and T-cell malignancies, and suggest that truncation of the ankyrin domain may be a common mechanism of lesion leading to abnormal lyt-10 activation in lymphoid neoplasia.