Zonal unit-gravity elutriation. A new technique for separating large cells and multicellular complexes from cell suspensions.

A new and simple technique, zonal unit-gravity elutriation, has been devised for separating very large cells, multicellular complexes, or small organisms from suspensions consisting mainly of small cells. The separation vessel is a conical chamber with an entrance at the lower, narrower part of the cone and an exit at the upper, wider part of the cone via a dome-shaped lid. A baffle at the entrance prevents turbulence from incoming fluid. Chambers of differing widths and wall slopes are chosen depending on the sedimentation rate of the particles to be separated. A small volume of the cell suspension is placed in the chamber on the bench in a cold-room. Medium stabilized by a shallow density gradient is pumped into the base of the chamber and ascends, creating a decreasing velocity gradient. Cells sediment at unit-gravity against this ascending counterstream, and are separated into bands according to sedimentation velocity. By adjusting the flow rate of the medium, different sizes of cells can be separated. Tumor cells can be enriched, and larger blast cells can be separated from small cells in lymphoid cell suspensions. The procedure produces complete separation of thymic nurse cells (epithelial-lymphoid complexes) from free thymocytes in digested thymus suspensions and produces substantial enrichment of thymic rosettes (macrophage-lymphoid complexes). A very favorable situation for applying this technique is the isolation of Taenia taeniaformis larvae, which can be completely purified from infected liver suspensions, representing a 4 X 10(5)-fold enrichment of the parasites, with high recovery, in a single 30 min operation.