Analysis of the B lymphocyte repertoire by polyclonal activation. Hindrance by clones yielding antibodies which bind promiscuously to plastic.

We here describe a form of 'noise' in the ELISA as commonly performed on antigen-coated microtiter trays that represents a major hindrance to the accurate enumeration of infrequent antibody-forming cell (AFC) precursors (AFCp) specific for epitopes on monomeric proteins. Supernatants from cultures of lipopolysaccharide-stimulated murine splenocytes, when split into aliquots and separately assayed, scored as positive in parallel on ELISA trays coated with unrelated proteins and on uncoated trays. Some properties of such coincident false positives (CFP) noted were: (1) optical density (OD) ranges for CFP and non-CFP overlapped; (2) different members of CFP triplets on differently coated assay trays usually had similar OD values; (3) CFP-generating culture supernatants did not contain unusually high immunoglobulin concentrations; and (4) numbers of CFP-forming supernatants increased with increasing input cells/culture consistent with causation by single AFCp present at an approximate mean frequency of 1 in 6600 CBA splenocytes. It is proposed that CFP are due to AFC clones that secrete antibody reactive with some epitope(s) present in the assay tray itself. Repertoire elements with such 'anti-plastic' characteristics are rarer than anti-keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) AFCp, but at least as frequent as anti-bovine serum albumin (BSA) or anti-transferrin (TFN) AFCp.