A new system that analyzes erythropoietin‐mediated early signal transduction: Transfection of the c‐fos enhancer·promoter‐luciferase gene into a murine erythroid cell line

:  Erythropoietin (Epo) exerts its effects by binding specific receptors on the surface of reactive cells. However, the signal transduction system after binding has not been well described. To develop a system to analyze the steps of signal transduction, we transfected the human c-fos-enhancer/promoter linked with the Photinus pyralis luciferase gene (pfosluc2) into a murine erythroleukemia cell line ELM-I-1, in which we previously showed that c-fos mRNA is rapidly induced upon Epo-stimulation. A stable transfectant was obtained. The cells transfected with pfosluc2 were stimulated with Epo and luciferase activity in the cells was measured as light intensity. The light intensity integrated for 2 min (LI2.0) was 3202 ± 80 unit/1.5 × 105 cells before stimulation. This increased up to 5869 ± 321 unit/1.5 × 105 cells by incubating the cells with 5 U/ml Epo for 2 h. After Epo stimulation, light intensity began to increase at 30 min, reached a peak (about 1.8 times the basal level) at 120 min, and then gradually dropped. The effect of Epo was dose-dependent; significant action occurred at as low as 0.5 U/ml, with a maximum at 5 U/ml. A similar response was observed when the cells were stimulated with interleukin-3 (IL-3) although the response was apparently lower than that with Epo. It was also found that IL-3 had an additive action with Epo on c-fos activity in this system. Thus, the above method was proven to be simple, rapid and sensitive enough to use to determine the early phase of signal transduction of Epo.