In contrast to mammalian erythroid cells that lost their nucleus at the end of the differentiation process, circulating chicken erythrocytes, like erythrocytes of most other non-mammalian vertebrates, are nucleated although their nucleus is believed to be transcriptionally silent. This major difference suggests that the erythroid differentiation process is likely to present both similarities and differences in mammals compared to other vertebrates. Since proteins are the major cellular effectors, analysis of the proteome is more prone to reflect true differences than analysis of the pattern of mRNA expression. We have previously reported the evolution of the proteome of human erythroid cells throughout their differentiation process. Here we report the analysis of the proteome of chicken erythroblasts during their terminal differentiation. We used the T2EC cellular model that allows to obtain homogenous populations of immature erythroblasts. Induction of their terminal differentiation led to their maturation and the possibility to obtain cells at different differentiation stages. Mass spectrometry analysis of these cell populations allowed the absolute quantification of 6167 proteins throughout the terminal differentiation process. Beside many proteins with similar expression patterns between chicken and human erythroblasts, like SLC4A1 (Band3), GATA1 or CD44, this analysis also revealed that other important proteins like Kit or other GATA transcription factors exhibit fully different patterns of expression.

Deep proteomic analysis of chicken erythropoiesis