Establishment of permanent chimerism in a lactate dehydrogenase-deficient mouse mutant with hemolytic anemia

Pluripotent hemopoietic stem cell function was investigated in the homozygous muscle type lactate dehydrogenase (LDH-A) mutant mouse using bone marrow transplantation experiments. Hemopoietic tissues of LDH-A mutants showed a marked decreased in enzyme activity that was associated with severe hemolytic anemia. This condition proved to be transplantable into wild type mice (+/+) through total body irradiation (TBI) at a lethal dose of 8.0 Gy followed by engraftment of mutant bone marrow cells. Since the mutants are extremely radiosensitive (lethal dose50/30 4.4 Gy vs 7.3 Gy in +/+ mice), 8.0-Gy TBI followed by injection of even high numbers of normal bone marrow cells did not prevent death within 5-6 days. After a nonlethal dose of 4.0 Gy and grafting of normal bone marrow cells, a transient chimerism showing peripheral blood characteristics of the wild type was produced that returned to the mutant condition within 12 weeks. The transfusion of wild type red blood cells prior to and following 8.0-Gy TBI and reconstitution with wild type bone marrow cells prevented the early death of the mutants and permanent chimerism was achieved. The chimeras showed all hematological parameters of wild type mice, and radiosensitivity returned to normal. It is concluded that the mutant pluripotent stem cells are functionally comparable to normal stem cells, emphasizing the significance of this mouse model for studies of stem cell regulation.