Inducer-mediated commitment of murine erythroleukemia cells to differentiation: a multistep process.

There are a number of agents which, when added to cultures of murine erythroleukemia cells (MELC), markedly increase the probability of commitment to express the characteristics of terminal erythroid differentiation, including loss of proliferative capacity and increased accumulation of globin mRNA and hemoglobin. Some characteristics of inducer-mediated commitment of MELC to terminal erythroid differentiation were examined by determining the effects of dexamethasone (an inhibitor of inducer-mediated MELC differentiation) and of hemin (an inducer of globin mRNA accumulation). Previously, it was shown that exposure of MELC to hexamethylene-bisacetamide (HMBA) leads to commitment, detectable within 12 hr. MELC cultured with both HMBA and dexamethasone do not express commitment. MELC transferred from culture with HMBA and dexamethasone to cloning medium without these agents express commitment to terminal erythroid differentiation, indicating that MELC retain a "memory" for some early HMBA-mediated changes leading to commitment which occur even in the presence of the inhibitory steroid. The kinetics of commitment in experiments in which exposure to HMBA is interrupted, or dexamethasone is added to the culture in HMBA, suggest that there is a rate-limiting step early in the commitment process. The memory for this step persists for more than one cell cycle. Addition of hemin to cultures with HMBA and dexamethasone initiated accumulation of globin mRNA but does not reverse the steroid-mediated inhibition of terminal cell division (that is, the cells retain their proliferative capacity). Inducer-mediated MELC commitment is associated with accumulation of the chromatin protein IP25; dexamethasone does not inhibit this accumulation. Accumulation of IP25 may be inducer-related, but it is not sufficient to cause expression of terminal erythroid differentiation.