The box-1 region of the leukemia inhibitory factor receptor α-chain cytoplasmic domain is sufficient for hemopoietic cell proliferation and differentiation

Abstract

Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) is a pleiotropic cytokine that acts on a variety of cell types and regulates cell proliferation and differentiation. The functional receptor for LIF is composed of LIFR α-chain (LIFRα) and gp130 both of which are shared in the functional receptors for oncostatin M, ciliary neurotrophic factor, and cardiotrophin-1. By using stable transfection of wild-type or cytoplasmic deletion mutants of LIFRα together with full-length gp130 into Ba/F3 cells, we found that cells expressing gp130 and an extensively deleted mutant LIFRα containing only the box-1 region were capable of proliferating in response to LIF, although LIF-dependent long term growth of these cells was..