The genomic region encoding the miR-17−92 microRNA (miRNA) cluster is often amplified in lymphoma and other cancers, and miRNAs within this cluster are expressed in high amounts in cancer cells carrying this amplification. Retroviral expression of miR-17−92 accelerates cMyc-induced lymphoma development, but precisely how elevated miR-17−92 expression promotes lymphomagenesis remains unclear. Here we generated mice with elevated miR-17−92 expression in lymphocytes. These mice developed lymphoproliferative disease and autoimmunity, and died prematurely. Lymphocytes from these mice showed increased proliferation and reduced activationinduced cell death. miR-17−92 miRNAs suppressed expression of the tumor suppressor Pten and the pro-apoptotic protein Bim. This mechanism likely contributed to the lymphoproliferative disease and autoimmunity observed in miR-17−92 transgenic mice, and to lymphoma development in patients carrying amplifications of the miR-17−92 coding region.

MiR-150 is a microRNA (miRNA) specifically expressed in mature lymphocytes, but not their progenitors. A top predicted target of miR-150 is c-Myb, a transcription factor controlling multiple steps of lymphocyte development. Combining loss- and gain-of-function gene targeting approaches for miR-150 with conditional and partial ablation of c-Myb, we show that miR-150 indeed controls c-Myb expression in vivo in a dose-dependent manner over a narrow range of miRNA and c-Myb concentrations and that this dramatically affects lymphocyte development and response. Our results identify a key transcription factor as a critical target of a stage-specifically expressed miRNA in lymphocytes and suggest that this and perhaps other miRNAs have evolved to control the expression of just a few critical target proteins in particular cellular contexts.

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified a genetic variant of moderate effect size at 6p21.1 associated with erythrocyte traits in humans. We show that this variant affects an erythroid-specific enhancer of CCND3. A Ccnd3 knockout mouse phenocopies these erythroid phenotypes, with a dramatic increase in erythrocyte size and a concomitant decrease in erythrocyte number. By examining human and mouse primary erythroid cells, we demonstrate that the CCND3 gene product cyclin D3 regulates the number of cell divisions that erythroid precursors undergo during terminal differentiation, thereby controlling erythrocyte size and number. We illustrate how cell type-specific specialization can occur for general cell cycle components-a finding resulting from the biological follow-up of unbiased human genetic studies.