Analysis of primitive erythroid cell proliferation and enucleation using a cyan fluorescent reporter in transgenic mice.

Primitive erythropoiesis is a vital process for mammalian embryonic development. Here we report the generation and characterization of a new transgenic mouse line that expresses a histone H2B-CFP fusion protein in the nuclei of primitive erythroid cells. We demonstrate the potential of this ε-globin-histone H2B-CFP line for multicolor imaging and flow cytometry analysis. The ε-globin-H2B-CFP line was used to analyze the cell cycle distribution and proliferation of CFP-expressing primitive erythroblasts from E8.5-E13.5. We also evaluated phagocytosis of extruded CFP-positive nuclei by macrophages in fetal liver and placenta. The ε-globin-H2B-CFP transgenic mouse line adds to the available tools for studying the development of the primitive erythroid lineage.