Lethal eosinophilic crystalline pneumonia in mice expressing a stabilized Csf2 mRNA

Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) is a cytokine that stimulates the proliferation and differentiation of granulocyte and macrophage precursors. The mouse gene-encoding GM-CSF, Csf2, is regulated at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. An adenine-uridine-rich element (ARE) within the 3'-untranslated region of Csf2 mRNA was shown in cell transfection studies to confer instability on this transcript. To explore the physiological importance of this element in an intact animal, we generated mice with a knock-in deletion of the 75-nucleotide ARE. Mice heterozygous for this ARE deletion developed severe respiratory distress and death within about 12 weeks of age. There was dense infiltration of lung alveolar spaces by crystal-containing macrophages. Increased stability of Csf2 mRNA was confirmed in bone marrow-derived macrophages, and elevated GM-CSF levels were observed in serum and lung. These mice did not exhibit notable abnormalities in blood or bone marrow, and transplantation of bone marrow from mutant mice into lethally irradiated WT mice did not confer the pulmonary phenotype. Mice with a conditional deletion of the ARE restricted to lung type II alveolar cells exhibited an essentially identical lethal lung phenotype at the same ages as the mice with the whole-body deletion. In contrast, mice with the same conditional ARE deletion in myeloid cells, including macrophages, exhibited lesser degrees of macrophage infiltration into alveolar spaces much later in life, at approximately 9 months of age. Post-transcriptional Csf2 mRNA stability regulation in pulmonary alveolar epithelial cells appears to be essential for normal physiological GM-CSF secretion and pulmonary macrophage homeostasis.