Proliferation-differentiation pathways of murine haemopoiesis: correlation of lineage fluxes

Abstract. A quantitative analysis of literature data on muiine bone marrow haemopoiesis was performed in order to determine how the haemolpoietic system fulfils requirements of cell turnover in the normal steady state. In particular, the production rates (fluxes) of erythrocytes, megakaryocytes, monocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils and mast cells have been calculated and normalized. Subsequently, based on available data on relationships of various lineages, a working model of the developmental schema of haemopoiesis was derived. Since, according to the principle of conservation, the effluxes of all lineages from bone marrow in the steady state must be equal to effluxes from the compartments of respective precursors divided by the coefficient of multiplication, the correlation of lineage fluxes was used to determine the position of branching points. It was concluded that all the quantita.tive data on lineage proliferation in the normal steady state in vivo, available for analysis, are fully consistent with a simple binary model of the sequential type, similar to that suggested by Brown and coworkers (Brown G., Jones NA, Bunce CM, Owen PJ, IPatton WN. (1988) Haemopoiesis: a lottery or determinism?Differentiation, 39 , 83).