Analysis of Lymphocyte Surface Antigen Expression by the Use of Variant Cell Lines

Abstract

Distinct cell types arising within the same organism show both qualitative and quantitative differences in the cell-surface molecules they express (Boyse and Old 1969; Schlesinger 1970; Bennett et al. 1972). A paradigmatic example of this are the cells of the lymphoid system, in which a number of molecules specific to cells in various stages of differentiation can be identified immunologically (Boyse and Old 1969; McKenzie and Snell 1975; Trowbridge et al. 1975a; Cantor and Boyse 1975). Since all of the cells of the lymphoid system arise from a common stem cell (Wu et al. 1968), there must exist a network of structural and regulatory genes that interact during lymphocyte differentiation to produce the surface phenotype characteristic of cells in a particular stage along their pathway of differentiation.