Establishment and characterization of murine macrophage-like cell lines following transformation with simian virus 40 DNA deleted at the origin of replication.

Differentiated mammalian cell lines can be established by introducing viral oncogenes into primary cells. Such lines can retain their original specialised functions while being adapted to prolonged life in culture; but most transformed cell lines obtained in this way characteristically show altered properties compared with the primary cells. The result of these changes is that transformed cell lines no longer provide a good model of the original tissue, and indeed often resemble other transformed lines more than the initial cell type. In our laboratory three murine peritoneal macrophage-like cell lines have been isolated by transforming primary cells with SV40 origin-deleted DNA. These lines have been in continuous culture for approximately 1 year and have been shown to express many macrophage-specific properties throughout this time, including Fc receptors and staining for non-specific esterase. The cell lines phagocytosed IgG-coated particles, they were positive for the murine macrophage-specific marker F4/80 and they showed antigen-presentation function. Lysozyme, acid phosphatase, plasminogen activator, collagenase, prostaglandin E2 and 5'-nucleotidase activities have also been detected in these lines. In this paper the method of DNA transformation will be described as well as some of the assays used for the characterization of the three immortalized cell lines.