Commitment to erythroid differentiation by friend erythroleukemia cells: a stochastic analysis.

A method for the clonal analysis of murine erythroleukemia cells has been developed which allows the precise characterization of the number of progeny produced by each cell and the degree of differentiation of each progeny cell. The potential of almost every cell in the culture can be monitored because a plating efficiency close to 100% has been achieved. The effects of treatment with an inducer of differentiation (DMSO) on the proliferative capacity of the treated cells have been studied with this technique. Cells from a mass culture treated with inducer give rise to colonies of differentiated progeny when subsequently cloned in the absence of inducer. Colonies exhibiting this phenotype represent the progeny of cells committed to the differentiation pathway by treatment with inducer. We observe that the commitment decision limits the subsequent proliferative capacity of the cell to four additional cell divisions. A quantitative analysis suggests that the commitment decision for each cell is made in a stochastic manner. Irreversible commitment to the expression of differentiated functions occurs with discrete probability per cell generation for many cell generations. The value for this probability is a function of the concentration of inducer (DMSO). A correlative biochemical study suggests that an irreversible commitment decision by a significant proportion of the population precedes or accompanies increases in cytoplasmic globin mRNA levels, one of the earliest detectable biochemical markers for erythroid differentiation in this system. A specific kinetic model based on these considerations has been developed to predict clonal phenotypes as a function of time and probability of commitment. Quantitative predictions based on this model are in excellent agreement with experimental observations. The effectiveness of a stochastic model in predicting the behavior of this system is discussed in relation to the stochastic behavior of normal hematopoiesis and the biochemical mechanisms which control these differentiation programs.