MadSci Network: Cell Biology
Query:

Re: insert nucleus of leucocyte into Red Blood Cell

Date: Mon Oct 6 13:16:45 2008
Posted By: Billy Carver, Grad student, Biomedical Sciences, Vanderbilt University
Area of science: Cell Biology
ID: 1217822949.Cb
Message:

Hien,

This is a really interesting question you’ve asked. First let me answer in a “technical” way. As I’m sure you know, red blood cells (a.k.a. erythrocytes) are enucleated; during their developmental pathway, they expel their nuclei. What you might not know is that shortly after this, their ribosomes degrade. Ribosomes are small organelles composed of RNA and protein that translate mRNA from the nucleus into functional proteins. That means that shortly before differentiation into their mature form, red blood cells contain all the protein they ever will. Because the nucleus controls cell function by gene expression, if ribosomes do not allow for genes to be translated, the nucleus cannot exert any control. Therefore, if you implanted the nucleus of any cells, leukocyte or otherwise, into a red blood cell, I think you would just end up with an eminently displeased red blood cell.

I am also sure you are familiar with somatic cell nuclear transfer. This technique, pioneered in frogs by John Gurdon at Cambridge, transfers the nucleus of one cell type into another cell type – often a one-cell embryo. Somatic cell nuclear transfer has been used for cloning in the past (Hello Dolly!) and is proposed to be a possible therapy for degenerative illnesses in the future (imagine creating new insulin- producing cells by taking the cell of a diabetic patient and implanting them into a stem cell). The mechanism behind this extremely controversial, powerful tool is the fact that a nucleus from an adult cell can take on the attributes of the cell into which it is placed, so a skin cell’s nucleus can be tricked into becoming an embryonic stem cell nucleus by putting it into an embryonic stem cell. This cell now has the genetic information of the skin cell, but the pluripotence of the stem cell.

This technique has not been tried with many other cells, though. If I had to make an educated guess, I would say that if a stem cell can convince a skin cell’s nucleus to become a stem cell nucleus, why can’t a red blood cell convinced a white blood cell’s nucleus to become a red blood cell nucleus? Therefore the transferred nucleus would take on the characteristics of a red blood cell with a nucleus, which is called an erythroblast.

I hope this answers your questions! Good luck with your school work!

Regards,
Billy.

For some further reading, I suggest the following Wikipedia articles.
Beware, though, of using Wikipedia articles as citations for schoolwork or other documents:
John Gurdon -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gurdon
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell_nuclear_transfer
Dolly the Sheep (great diagrams!) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_the_sheep
Red Blood Cells and Hematopoiesis -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematopoiesis and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_blood_cell

Finally, this article is a little dense but contains some interesting facts on liver-derived erythrocytes:
Joseph A. Grasso Ph.D., Hewson Swift Ph.D., and G. Adolph Ackerman M.D.
"OBSERVATIONS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ERYTHROCYTES IN MAMMALIAN FETAL LIVER."
Journal of Cell Biology 14,235-254.


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