The retinoblastoma protein (pRB) and the related pocket proteins, p107 and p130, play crucial roles in mammalian cell cycle control. Recent studies indicate that these pocket proteins are also involved in cellular di erentiation processes. We demonstrate in this work that the pRB-related p130 selectively accumulates during the in vitro di erentiation of the myeloid progenitor cell, 32Dcl3, into granulocyte in response to granulocytecolony stimulating factor (G-CSF). This G-CSF-dependent granulocytic di erentiation is blocked by the adenovirus E1A oncoprotein, which binds to and inactivates the pRB family of pocket proteins including p130. Furthermore, enforced overexpression of p130 but not pRB inhibits the myeloid cell proliferation that is concomitantly associated with granulocytic di erentiation morphologically characterized by nuclear segmentation. However, simple G1-cell cycle arrest induced by cytokine deprivation or ectopic overexpression of the p27 cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, or inhibition of E2F activities by dominant negative DP-1 is not su cient to trigger granulocytic di erentiation. The di erentiationpromoting activity of p130 in myeloid cells requires both the pocket domain and the spacer domain. Our results indicate that the pRB-related p130 plays a critical role in myeloid cell di erentiation and suggest that coupling of cell cycle exit with the cellular di erentiation program may be speciÂźcally achieved by p130.