HMGA1 and acute lymphoblastic leukemia: To determine if any of the genes dysregulated by HMGA1 in the transgenic model are relevant to human lymphoid malignancy, we knocked-down HMGA1 in Jurkat cells (a human T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia or T-ALL cell line) and assessed the expression of the 8 genes validated in the transgenic model by qRT-PCR (see Additional file 2).