COMPETITIVE REPOPULATION - NEW ASSAY FOR LONG-TERM STEM-CELL FUNCTIONAL-CAPACITY

  • 1 January 1980
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 55  (1) , 77-81
Abstract
A new assay for the long-term functional capacity of hemopoietic stem cells was reported. Stem cell function in each [mouse] donor of a particular genotype was assayed by mixing its marrow cells with a constant number of marrow cells from a donor with distinguishable Hb and measuring the relative ability of each donor to populate stem-cell-depleted recipients. Cells from many different B6 donors may be assayed by mixing them with a constant number of WBB6F1 cells from a single pool and injecting them into irradiated WBB6F1 recipients. As the ratio of B6 to WBB6F1 marrow cells increased from 0:1 to 3:1, the percentage of B6 Hb increased in a linear fashion. This is also found with WB and WBB6F1 or CBA and B6CBAF1 mixtures. Correlation coefficients between the percentage of Hb of 1 donor type and the ratio of cells in the mixture of that type ranged from 0.78-0.98 in single experiments and were 0.68 and 0.75 using data pooled from several experiments.