The EpoR 1 belongs to a large family of cytokine receptors, many of which are required for the proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic as well as other cell types (4 -7). Throughout life, eight different hematopoietic lineages arise from pluripotent stem cells in the bone marrow (8, 9). The exact role of growth factors in this process is not clear and has been described broadly by two alternative hypotheses. The stochastic hypothesis suggests that commitment of a progenitor to a particular lineage is a stochastic event, subsequent to which cell differentiation proceeds along a predetermined program; growth factors are merely required to ensure the survival and proliferation of committed progenitors (10 -14). The contrasting inductive, or instructive, hypothesis attributes to growth factors a direct role in cell differentiation, predicting that growth factor receptors transduce signals that uniquely specify the differentiation outcome of a progenitor (15)(16)(17). A number of hybrid hypotheses have also been proposed, where, for example, committed progenitors arise stochastically, but their subsequent differentiation and acquisition of the mature phenotype are uniquely induced by lineage-specific growth factors (18).Although Epo is essential for the production of red blood cells, it is not thought to play a role in the generation of committed erythroid progenitors from pluripotent progenitors: expression of recombinant EpoR does not bias the lineage commitment of pluripotent hematopoietic progenitors (19,20), and normal numbers of committed erythroid BFU-e and CFU-e progenitors are found in the fetal livers of EpoR Ϫ/Ϫ mutant mice (21). However, there is a unique requirement for EpoR activation during the subsequent proliferation and terminal differentiation of committed erythroid progenitors: the EpoR Ϫ/Ϫ CFU-e and BFU-e progenitors fail to give rise to mature erythrocytes unless EpoR is expressed by retroviral infection (21); and in vitro, other growth factors only partially substitute for . It is not known whether EpoR activation is essential at this stage of erythroid differentiation because of an EpoR-unique instructive signal or whether it is simply required for functions that are not unique to EpoR, such as its proliferative and anti-apoptotic effects.Some evidence for the capability of EpoR to promote the erythroid phenotype comes from the ability of Epo to induce surface expression of glycophorin (25) and transcription of the -globin gene (26, 27) in pre-B Ba/F3 cells expressing a transfected EpoR. However, the uncertain lineage commitment of many cell lines and their incomplete differentiation response makes them less suitable for the study of signaling in differentiation. EpoR-mediated signaling for proliferation can be studied in a number of interleukin-3-dependent cell lines, where heterologous expression of EpoR allows Epo to support cell proliferation (1, 2). Only the membrane proximal ϳ120 amino acids is essential for this function (1-3). Similarly truncated mutants of other cytokine r...