Rosette formation by human lymphoid cells with monkey red blood cells.

The present paper describes a study on rosette formation by human lymphoid cells with monkey erythrocytes (MRBC) obtained from two species: African green monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) and rhesus monkey (Macaca mulata). All the lymphocyte preparations obtained from peripheral blood, tonsils, thymocytes, bone-marrow and spleen biopsies formed rosettes in variable proportions with erythrocytes obtained from these two monkey species tested. Cells of established lymphoblastoid cell lines characterized as being of either B- or T-cell origin also formed rosettes with MRBC. Taken together, the data obtained suggest that the MRBC-rosette assay cannot be reliably used for identifying lymphocyte subpopulations presently known to us, thus largely contradicting the observations previously reported by others on the use of this assay. In addition, we found that the binding sites for MRBC on the above lymphoid cells are highly sensitive to trypsin treatment and can fully be regenerated within 14-15 h when these treated cells are cultured at 37 degrees.