Countercurrent centrifugal elutriation in a table-top centrifuge.

An elutriation system has been developed which fits into a small table-top centrifuge. The new CS1 rotor functioned as accurately as the JE-6 rotor, commercially available from Beckman Instruments. However, fewer cells were required for the separation experiments. Leukocytes obtained from 25 ml whole blood by Ficoll-Hypaque gradient centrifugation were sufficient for separating lymphocytes from monocytes and for purifying granulocytes. Furthermore, when lymphocytes were harvested from cell cultures 40 ml of a suspension of 1.2 x 10(6) cells/ml were enough to yield an enriched preparation of antibody producing cells.