Evidence for heterogeneity of the osteoblastic phenotype determined with clonal rat bone cells established from transforming growth factor-beta-induced cell colonies grown anchorage independently in semisolid medium.

Numerous reports have appeared in the literature indicating phenotypic heterogeneity among cells of the osteoblastic lineage. This diversity may be due to either certain stages of differentiation or a subspecialization of already terminally differentiated osteoblasts. To obtain answers to this question, we report on studies undertaken to clone bone cell populations from 1 day postnatal rat calvaria which express well defined differences in phenotype. To achieve this goal, we have used the soft agarose cloning technique which previously has almost exclusively been applied to clone cells of neoplastic origin. The reason for being able to employ this method is based on the fact that bone cells can be induced by transforming growth factor-beta to reversibly acquire the transformed phenotype, an event expressed by anchorage-dependent bone cells to form progressively growing colonies in soft agarose. Individual colonies, harvested from agarose, were expanded to clonal bone cell populations. Characterizing 48 cell clones by detection of osteoblastic cell markers such as alkaline phosphatase activity, PTH- and prostaglandin-E2-induced adenylate cyclase activity, osteocalcin mRNA synthesis, as well as collagen synthesis, 7 subsets of osteoblastic cell types were identified. Each subset was found to express a distinct phenotype, indicated by the absence or presence of osteoblastic cell markers. Some clones, previously found not to exhibit any osteoblastic traits, developed PTH responsiveness when treated with insulin-like growth factor-I/transforming growth factor-beta, suggesting that these clones may originate from the osteoprogenitor cell pool. While most clonal cell populations were characterized as fully functional osteoblastic cells, some clones expressed merely 1, 2, or 3 osteoblastic markers, which suggests that they may represent stages of differentiation along the osteogenic pathway. In addition, other subclones displayed the capacity to synthesize osteocalcin and showed PTH and prostaglandin-E2 responsiveness, but were found to be devoid of alkaline phosphatase activity. Others expressed all osteoblastic cell markers except PTH responsiveness. The phenotypic constellation of the latter suggests that these cell clones may represent mature osteoblast-like cells, which, perhaps due to environmental circumstances present at the time of isolation, have become altered in accordance with the physiological requirements of the tissue.