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Posted by Jim on November 04, 1999 at 08:19:39:
In Reply to: B cell committment posted by Pierre on November 01, 1999 at 17:46:56:
: Did you read the article
: by Nutt et al; in Nature 401, page 556, 7 oct 99
I've read the article, and found it very interesting. References 47 & 48 in this paper refer to a 'Controversies in Hematology' feature in the journal Blood (vol. 92, no. 2, July 15, 1998, pp. 345-362). In his rebuttal to Enver, Heyworth & Dexter, Donald Metcalf relies heavily on this argument: "With a genuinely random process, the probability of progenitor cells of a particular type appearing in a developing blast colony composed of progenitor cells should increase as progenitor cell numbers increase in the colony. Current data in our laboratory indicate no correlation between the total number of progenitor cells in such colonies and the presence or absence of progenitors commited to a particular lineage. This seems a powerful argument against random generation".
The data to which he refers are probably the data published in PNAS in 1998 (I'll attach a link to the PubMed abstract).
Nutt et al mention (p. 560) an analysis of the differentiation potential of eight subclones, but provide no data about subclone-to-subclone variations in relative frequencies of progenitors of various cell lineages. They only mention that "differentiation into granulocytes and NK cells was variable".
Any comments about Donald Metcalf's argument?
--Jim