Temperature-sensitive changes in the structure of globin chromatin in lines of red cell precursors transformed by...

Chicken bone marrow cells infected in vitro with a temperature-sensitive avian erythroblastosis virus fall to produce hemoglobin at 36 degrees C. When the product or products of the transforming gene (erb) are inactivated by a temperature shift to 42 degrees C in culture, several different cloned lines of cells infected with the temperature-sensitive avian erythroblastosis virus begin to make hemoglobin. This shift in phenotype correlates with an increase in hemoglobin mRNA specific to both adult and embryonic alpha and beta globin. The switch is accompanied by the acquisition of DNAase I-hypersensitive sites in one cell line (clone 2); however, a hypothetically more mature line (clone 3) has already acquired globin DNAase-hypersensitive sites but does not express hemoglobin until the temperature shift. Several (but not all) specific restriction sites associated with both the alpha and beta domains become unmethylated after the switch from 36 degrees C to 42 degrees C. The magnitude of these methylation switches is small compared with changes that occur in these genes during normal avian erythropoiesis. The results suggest that changes in chromosomal structure precede transcription and are not a consequence of transcription. Since (presumptive) precursor cloned lines can be established with some, but not all, of the structural properties of active globin chromatin, it is likely that many of these properties can be independently established and are not obligatorily related.