Mouse erythrocyte rosette formation by human lymphoid cell lines.

Lymphoid cell lines have been studied with respect to mouse erythrocyte rosette formation, a marker for B cells. Cells from six B-cell lines out of fifteen tested were able to form mouse erythrocyte rosettes. When this capacity was studied after neuraminidase pretreatment of the cells, it defined three groups of B lymphoid cell lines according to their reactivity. However, these groups could not be correlated to any of the other B-cell markers, and especially mouse erythrocyte rosette formation appeared unrelated to the class of the immunoglobulin present on the cell surface. Non B-cell lines were never found to form such rosettes. The capacity of B-cell lines to form mouse erythrocyte rosette was further demonstrated to be relatively insensitive to trypsin treatment, and results are presented suggesting some degree of cell cycle dependency of the expression of this marker.