Lactate production and amino acid incorporation in interleukin 3-dependent, factor-deprived hemopoietic murine cell lines

Interleukin 3 (IL-3) stimulates the growth of various types of hemopoietic progenitors. In vitro, survival of a series of murine cell lines derived from either neoplastic or nonneoplastic hemopoietic tissue shows a strict IL-3 dependence. In order to test the implication of energy metabolism in this dependence as claimed in several studies, intracellular ATP levels as well as accumulative lactate release were measured in the murine hemopoietic lines FDC-P1, 32Dcl.23, DA-1, DA-3, NFS-60, and NFS-78. ATP levels showed little or no changes within 4–6 h of IL-3 starvation. In the absence of IL-3 the accumulative lactate release ranged from 1.4 to 2.6 m M, and in its presence values between 1.5 and 3.4 m M were recorded within 7 h. Only 32Dcl.23 showed an almost complete suppression of lactate release upon IL-3 withdrawal. The cell cycle times of these cell lines determined by flow cytometry ranged between 9 (DA-3) and 24 h (NFS-78). In the presence of IL-3 there was a significant inverse relationship between cell cycle times and lactate production. It is concluded that neither ATP generation nor the metabolic pathway of lactate production, although the latter correlated with proliferative activity in the studied cell lines, is controlled by IL-3. Furthermore, no control by IL-3 of essential amino acid incorporation into proteins was detected in cell lines 32Dcl.23 and NFS-60.