Monoclonal origin of B lymphocyte colony-forming cells in spleen colonies formed by multipotential hemopoietic stem cells.

Spleen colonies produced by transplanting lethally irradiated mice with either 12 day fetal liver or adult bone marrow cells were found to contain B- lymphocyte colony-forming cells (BL-CFC) . The proportion of BL-CFC positive spleen colonies did not increase substantially between 8 and 14 days after transplantation, the range being 18-45 percent. However, the absolute number of BL-CFC per spleen colony varied considerably (between 1 and 10,318), although the majority of colonies contained less than 200 BL-CFC. Irrespective of the time after transplantation, smaller spleen colonies were found to have a higher frequency of BL-CFC than larger spleen colonies. To determine the possible clonal origin of BL-CFC from spleen colony- forming unit (CFU-S), CBA mice were injected with equal numbers of CBA and CBA T(6)/T(6) fetal liver or adult bone marrow cells. Analysis of 7-15-day spleen colonies demonstrated that 90 percent were either exclusively T(6) positive or T(6) negative and approximately equal numbers ofboth colony types were observed. B-lymphocyte colonies were grown and successfully karyotyped from 19 spleen colonies. When compared with the original spleen colony karyotype the B-lymphocyte colony cells karyotype was identical in all 19 cases. In 3 of the 19 colonies analyzed a mixture of T(6) positive and T(6) negative karyotypes was present and identical proportions of the karyotypes were present in the pooled B-lymphocyte colony cells and spleen colony cells. The data indicate that the B-lymphocyte colony-forming cells detected in spleen colonies are genuine members of the hemopoietic clone derived from the initiating hemopoietic stem cell (CFU-S).