We have investigated the contribution of highly purified day-12 spleen colony-forming units (CFU-S-12) as well as more primitive cells to sustained blood cell production using in vivo and in vitro assays that allow frequency analysis. Normal or day-6 post-5-fluorouracil light-density bone marrow (BM) was sorted on the basis of differences in rhodamine-123 (Rh123) retention or wheat germ aggluti...

Outbreaks of bovine pleuropneumonia caused by small-colony strains of Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides occur in Africa, and vaccination is used for control. Since protein subunits are needed to improve multivalent vaccines, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were made to facilitate protein identification and isolation. Eleven immunoglobulin M MAbs derived from mouse spleen donors immunized with di...

In cultures of spleen cells from normal mice, recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) supported the formation of multipotential blast cell colonies. Serial replating of the blast cell colonies in the presence of G-CSF, however, failed to demonstrate any direct effect of G-CSF on murine multipotential progenitors. We therefore examined the effects of G-CSF in combination ...

Unexplained lymphadenopathy, with or without accompanying symptoms, known as the "lymphadenopathy syndrome," has been recognized in groups at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), namely, homosexuals and hemophiliacs. To date, however, no test has been defined that discriminates between asymptomatic individuals and those with adenopathy in these high-risk groups. The T colony ass...

Clonogenic assay or colony formation assay is an in vitro cell survival assay based on the ability of a single cell to grow into a colony. The colony is defined to consist of at least 50 cells. The assay essentially tests every cell in the population for its ability to undergo ‘‘unlimited’’ division. Clonogenic assay is the method of choice to determine cell reproductive death after treatment w...

Spleen cells educated in vitro with sheep red blood cells (SRBC) suppressed the plaque-forming cell response of Mishell-Dutton assay cultures challenged with optimal doses of SRBC. Changing conditions in the assay cultures changed the effect educated cells had on the assay culture responses. For example, educated cells helped rather than suppressed assay cultures of suboptimal numbers of spleen...

Anchorage-independent growth is the ability of transformed cells to grow independently of a solid surface, and is a hallmark of carcinogenesis. The soft agar colony formation assay is a well-established method for characterizing this capability in vitro and is considered to be one of the most stringent tests for malignant transformation in cells. This assay also allows for semi-quantitative eva...

Bacterial colony enumeration is an essential tool for many widely used biomedical assays. This chapter introduces a cost-effective and fully automatic bacterial colony counter which accepts digital images as its input. The proposed counter can handle variously shaped dishes/plates, recognize chromatic and achromatic images, and process both color and clear medium. In particular, the counter can...