A mesoderm-inducing factor produced by WEHI-3 murine myelomonocytic leukemia cells is activin A

The first inductive interaction in amphibian development is mesoderm induction, during which a signal from the vegetal hemisphere of the blastula-staged embryo induces mesoderm from overlying equatorial cells. Recently, a number of 'mesoderm-inducing factors' (MIFs), which may be responsible for this interaction, have been discovered. Examples of these MIFs include members of the fibroblast growth factor family as well as members of the TGF-beta superfamily such as TGF-beta 2. In addition to these purified factors, several new sources of mesoderm-inducing activity have been described. One of the most potent of these is the murine myelomonocytic leukemia cell line WEHI-3. Even at high dilutions, conditioned medium from WEHI-3 cells induces isolated Xenopus animal pole regions to form a variety of mesodermal cell types. In this paper we show by several criteria, including N-terminal amino acid sequencing, Northern blotting and various functional assays, that the WEHI-MIF is activin A. Activins are known to modulate the release of follicle-stimulating hormone from cultured anterior pituitary cells and to cause the differentiation of two erythroleukemia cell lines. Our results, along with recent data from other laboratories, indicate that these molecules may also act in early development in the formation of the mesoderm.