Kevin L. Albright

The cell differentiation of HL-60 human leukemic promyelocytes along the myeloid pathway due to various continuous and distributed exposures to retinoic acid was studied. HL-60 myeloid differentiation was a continuously driven process; significant terminal cell differentiation occurred only after a minimum exposure to inducer of two division cycles. Cells so committed to differentiation retained a heritable, finite memory of differentiation commitment over a further division cycle. Prior to becoming committed, cells acquired precommitment memory of exposure to inducer. Precommitment memory abbreviated the subsequent exposure to inducer needed for commitment to differentiation. Precommitment memory was semistable. It was heritable, but was lost after four division cycles. The acquisition and loss of precommitment memory correlated with alterations in nuclear architecture detected by narrow angle light scatter using flow cytometry. The altered nuclear architecture first occurred before any overt cell differentiation or growth arrest. It was thus an early event in the induced program of terminal cell differentiation. Alterations in relative abundances of cytoplasmic proteins also occurred prior to overt cell differentiation or growth arrest. One of these was a 17 kdalton, anionic, probably Ca2+ binding, protein. Retinoic acid thus induced early cellular changes, including cytoplasmic and nuclear alterations, within one cell cycle when cell differentiation was not yet apparent.

The question of whether the initial regulatory event, which directs an uncommitted precursor cell toward terminal differentiation, is cell cycle phase specific was examined using the human promyelocytic leukemia cell line, HL-60. While the HL-60 system does not reflect all of the features of normal hematopoiesis, it does provide a relatively well-defined in vitro experimental system which can be useful for examining aspects of the differentiation process. HL-60 cells were induced to undergo myeloid differentiation by retinoic acid. The subsequent differentiation kinetics of HL-60 populations initially enriched in different cell cycle phases was measured. This was compared to the cellular uptake of retinoic acid as a function of cell cycle position. If the initial differentiation-regulating event were cell cycle phase independent, then the kinetics of differentiation would be independent of the cell cycle status of the initial population. Flow cytometric cell sorting, based on cellular narrow angle and orthogonal light scatter intensity spectra, was used to select G1-enriched and S + G2 + M-enriched cell populations without pharmacological perturbation. These two populations were each induced to undergo myeloid differentiation with 10(-6) M beta-all-trans-retinoic acid. The kinetics of G1/0 arrest associated with terminal cell differentiation, as well as phenotypic differentiation, assayed by development of oxidative metabolism, was measured for both populations. The kinetics of differentiation differed for the two populations, indicating that the initial differentiation-regulating event was cell cycle phase specific. For both of the initial cell populations, significant phenotypic differentiation followed approximately 24 hr after enrichment in the relative number of S-phase cells. When exponentially proliferating HL-60 cells were exposed to a 1-hr pulse of 10(-5) M [3H]retinoic acid and then flow cytometrically sorted by DNA content, cells in late S + G2 + M had an approximately 10-fold higher uptake than cells in G1 or early S. The results indicate that cellular regulation of myeloid differentiation first becomes responsive to the inducer, retinoic acid, in S phase when uptake is enhanced.