Isolation of the turkey heterophil and measurement of its migratory functions under agarose.

A procedure for isolation of the turkey heterophil was developed. The procedure involves preliminary lysis of erythrocytes, using ammonium chloride and centrifugation of the leukocytes over a discontinuous gradient of 18% and 24% Ficoll. A minimum of 30% of the heterophils was consistently recovered from whole blood by application of this procedure. Spontaneous and chemotactic migratory responses of the isolated heterophils were assessed, using the migration under agarose technique. Supplementation of the agarose with 10% heat-inactivated turkey plasma and extension of the incubation period to 3 hours at 41 C in a 5% CO2-humidified atmosphere were required for optimal chemotaxis in response to zymosan-activated chicken serum. The heterophils did not respond chemotactically to the oligopeptide attractant, N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine, and did not specifically bind a radiolabeled form of this ligand.