Quantitative aspects of plasma membrane-associated immunoglobulin in clones of diploid human lymphocytes.

The amount of kappa and lambda chains and Fc fragment associated with the plasma membrane and in the entire cell has been measured for eight lines of human lymphocytes and 21 clones derived from two diploid lines. There was considerable variation in the nature and amount of membrane-associated immunoglobulin and total immunoglobulin among different cell lines and clones. Cells with different phenotypes for membrane-associated immunoglobulin were utilized to show that it is not simply absorbed from the culture medium onto the plasma membrane. The methods are useful for selecting variants which lack or have altered membrane-associated immunoglobulin.