Identification of erythroid colony progenitors in a subset of human peripheral null lymphocytes devoid of Fc receptors.

This study was aimed at purifying the progenitors of erythroid burst units (BFU-E) from human peripheral blood. Human mononuclear leukocytes from five normal donors were fractionated into several mononuclear cell subpopulations, including null lymphocytes with (null Fc+) and without (null Fc-) receptor for the Fc fragment of immunoglobulin G, through a succession of rosetting procedures and discontinuous Ficoll-Hypaque gradient centrifugations. The fractionated cells were separately cultured for 14 days in plasma clots in the presence of erythropoietin. Among fractionated cell subpopulations large and numerous BFU-E derived colonies grew only from the Fc- null lymphocyte subpopulation. This fraction, representing less than 4% of all mononuclear cells, also contains cells (42 + 11%) capable to differentiation towards the B-cell and plasma-cell lineages. The Fc+ null lymphocytes, representing less than 9% of all mononuclear cells, contained 15.2 + 3.3% cells capable of differentiation toward the T-cell lineage. The whole null lymphocyte subpopulation generated half the number of BFU-E colonies expected from its content in Fc- null lymphocytes. These data demonstrate that the progenitor of erythroid cells (BFU-E) resides in a small heterogeneous null Fc- subpopulation of circulating lymphocytes and suggest that its in vitro differentiation, though generally subjected to inhibitory and enhancing influences from other circulating cell subpopulations, does not necessarily require interaction with other peripheral blood cells.