Poster Presentation 40th Annual Lorne Genome Conference 2019

How did the red blood cell lose its nucleus? (#229)

Lucas M Newton 1 , Krystle Lim 1 , Patrick O Humbert 1
  1. La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, Kingsbury, VIC, Australia

Erythroid terminal differentiation is the process where red blood cells undergo significant morphological and functional changes prior to entering the blood stream. Characteristic of this is erythroid enucleation, a feature unique to mammalian erythroblasts that has been established as the rate limiting factor for the ex vivo synthesis of red blood cells. The enucleation event is a distinctive cell division, where the enucleated reticulocyte enters the blood stream and undergoes further maturation into a fully functioning erythrocyte, and the pyrenocyte containing the expelled nuclei, is degraded by macrophages in the bone-marrow microenvironment. Cyclin-dependent kinase-9 (CDK9) has been identified a novel regulator of enucleation, however the precise function and expression of CDK9 in human erythroid terminal differentiation is currently unknown. Here, I have established a number of validations and novel findings, including characterisation of the Human umbilical cord-blood derived erythroid progenitor-2 (HUDEP-2) cell line as a model for erythroid enucleation, the expression and localisation of CDK9 in human erythroid differentiation, as well as establishing a genetic system to identify the function of CDK9 in this process. The HUDEP-2 system effectively generates orthochromatic erythroblasts; however, the rate of enucleation is low, with many cells arresting in the final stages. CDK9 is expressed and localised to both the cytoplasm and nucleus of differentiating HUDEP-2 cells. Additionally, CDK9 appears to be strongly expressed in the reticulocyte body of enucleating cells. The functionality of CDK9 in human erythropoiesis remains unknown, however generation of a CDK9 analogue-sensitive HUDEP-2 stable cell line by CRISPR-Cas9 technology will allow future studies to elucidate the function of CDK9 in erythropoiesis.