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Updated: Apr 19, 2026
Identification and Analysis of Mouse Erythroid Progenitors using the CD71/TER119 Flow-cytometric Assay
Published on: August 5, 2011
CD71(high) population represents primitive erythroblasts derived from mouse embryonic stem cells
Ruihua Chao1, Xueping Gong1, Libo Wang1
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Regulatory Biology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences and School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
Abstract:
The CD71/Ter119 combination has been widely used to reflect dynamic maturation of erythrocytes in vivo. However, because CD71 is expressed on all proliferating cells, it is unclear whether it can be utilized as an erythrocyte-specific marker during differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). In this study, we revealed that a population expressing high level of CD71 (CD71(high)) during mouse ESC differentiation represented an in vitro counterpart of yolk sac-derived primitive erythroblasts (EryPs) isolated at 8.5days post coitum. In addition, these CD71(high) cells went through "maturational globin switching" and enucleated during terminal differentiation in vitro that were similar to the yolk sac-derived EryPs in vivo. We further demonstrated that the formation of CD71(high) population was regulated differentially by key factors including Scl, HoxB4, Eaf1, and Klf1. Taken together, our study provides a technical advance that allows efficient segregation of EryPs from differentiated ESCs in vitro for further understanding molecular regulation during primitive erythropoiesis.
