Does positioning of chromosomes 8 and 21 in interphase drive t(8;21) in acute myelogenous leukemia?

The impact of chromosome architecture in the formation of chromosome aberrations is a recent finding of interphase directed molecular cytogenetic studies. There evidence was provided that disease specific chromosomal translocations could be due to tissue specific genomic organization. In a recent small pilot study using three-dimensional interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization, we showed that there might be a specific chromosome positioning in myeloid bone marrow cells, i.e. a co-localization of chromosomes 8 and 21. Here we could substantiate this finding in overall 21 studied cases with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that there is even a co-localization of the genes AML1 and ETO. This finding led to the suggestion that a specific interphase architecture of myeloid bone marrow cells might promote the typical t(8;21)(q22;q22) leading to AML-M2.