Method for growing primitive erythroid progenitors (BFU-E) from rat bone marrow

A method for growing erythroid bursts from rat bone marrow cells is presented. The methylcellulose culture technique with rat spleen-conditioned medium was used. Successful growth of rat BFU-E was obtained with 20% fetal bovine serum when anemic rat plasma was used as the source of erythropoietin. Plating efficiency was 60 BFU-E per 2 x 10(5) nucleated cells seeded. The proliferative activity determined by cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C) suicide was about 22%. The effect of chronic hypertransfusion on erythroid colony formation is presented.