Effect of src infection on long-term marrow cultures: increased self-renewal of hemopoietic progenitor cells without leukemia.

Long-term marrow cultures prepared from mice have been infected with a molecular recombinant of Rous sarcoma virus and murine amphitropic leukemia virus. This resulted in introduction of the src gene into the cultured cells and expression of its protein kinase function. The infected cultures displayed an altered balance in the accumulation of cells in different compartments of granulocyte differentiation. There was a dramatic increase in the stem cell (CFU-S) compartment and the committed progenitor cell (GM-CFC) compartment and a decrease in mature granulocytes. The altered balance appears to be caused by intrinsic alterations in the CFU-S and GM-CFC themselves, which increase their "self-renewal" capacity at the expense of cell differentiation. Remarkably, unlike its effects in other systems, src did not produce a neoplastic transformation of the hemopoietic cells.