Fetal calf serum contains activities that induce fetal hemoglobin in adult
erythroid cell cultures
P Constantoulakis, B Nakamoto, T Papayannopoulou and G Stamatoyannopoulos
Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle 98195.
Cultures of peripheral blood or bone marrow erythroid progenitors display
stimulated production of fetal hemoglobin. We investigated whether this
stimulation is due to factors contained in the sera of the culture medium.
Comparisons of gamma/gamma + beta biosynthetic ratios in erythroid colonies
grown in fetal calf serum (FCS) or in charcoal treated FCS (C-FCS) showed
that FCS-grown cells had significantly higher gamma/gamma + beta ratios.
This increase in globin chain biosynthesis was reflected by an increase in
relative amounts of steady- state gamma-globin mRNA. In contrast to its
effect on adult cells, FCS failed to influence gamma-chain synthesis in
fetal burst forming units- erythroid (BFU-E) colonies. There was a high
correlation of gamma- globin expression in paired cultures done with C-FCS
or fetal sheep serum. Dose-response experiments showed that the induction
of gamma- globin expression is dependent on the concentration of FCS. These
results indicate that FCS contains an activity that induces gamma- globin
expression in adult erythroid progenitor cell cultures.
Volume 75,
Issue 9,
pp. 1862-1869,
05/01/1990
Copyright © 1990 by The American Society of Hematology
