The pattern of gene expression in human CD34⁺ stem/progenitor cells

We have analyzed the pattern of gene expression in human primary CD34⁺ stem/progenitor cells. We identified 42,399 unique serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) tags among 106,021 SAGE tags collected from 2.5 × 10⁶ CD34⁺ cells purified from bone marrow. Of these unique SAGE tags, 21,546 matched known expressed sequences, including 3,687 known genes, and 20,854 were novel without a match. The SAGE tags that matched known sequences tended to be at higher levels, whereas the novel SAGE tags tended to be at lower levels. By using the generation of longer sequences from SAGE tags for gene identification (GLGI) method, we identified the correct gene for 385 of 440 high-copy SAGE tags that matched multiple genes and we generated 198 novel 3′ expressed sequence tags from 138 high-copy novel SAGE tags. We observed that many different SAGE tags were derived from the same genes, reflecting the high heterogeneity of the 3′ untranslated region in the expressed genes. We compared the quantitative relationship for genes known to be important in hematopoiesis. The qualitative identification and quantitative measure for each known gene, expressed sequence tag, and novel SAGE tag provide a base for studying normal gene expression in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells and for studying abnormal gene expression in hematopoietic diseases.