Bone marrow cells adopt the phenotype of other cells by spontaneous cell fusion.
Recent studies have demonstrated that transplanted bone marrow cells can turn into unexpected lineages including myocytes, hepatocytes, neurons and many others. A potential problem, however, is that reports discussing such 'transdifferentiation' in vivo tend to conclude donor origin of transdifferentiated cells on the basis of the existence of donor-specific genes such as Y-chromosome markers. Here we demonstrate that mouse bone marrow cells can fuse spontaneously with embryonic stem cells in culture in vitro that contains interleukin-3. Moreover, spontaneously fused bone marrow cells can subsequently adopt the phenotype of the recipient cells, which, without detailed genetic analysis, might be interpreted as 'dedifferentiation' or transdifferentiation.
Terada
Naohiro
N
Department of Pathology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Florida 32610, USA. terada@pathology.ufl.edu
Hamazaki
Takashi
T
Oka
Masahiro
M
Hoki
Masanori
M
Mastalerz
Diana M
DM
Nakano
Yuka
Y
Meyer
Edwin M
EM
Morel
Laurence
L
Petersen
Bryon E
BE
Scott
Edward W
EW
D000818:Animals; D000943:Antigens, Differentiation; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002459:Cell Fusion; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000166:cytology; D005260:Female; D005819:Genetic Markers; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins; D007377:Interleukin-3 / Q000494:pharmacology; D007621:Karyotyping; D008164:Luminescent Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D010641:Phenotype; D011003:Ploidies; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*
D000943:Antigens, Differentiation; D005819:Genetic Markers; D007377:Interleukin-3; D008164:Luminescent Proteins; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins