Relationships between H-2 Region and surface characteristics of mouse spleen cells

The purpose of this investigation was to study whether allelic variations at the H-2 region which induce differences in the peptide composition of some glycoproteins of cell surface, also induce variations in electrical charges at the cell membrane. The surface charge was assessed by the electrophoretic mobility of the cell. Tests with different congenic strains were undertaken on spleen cells which were assumed to contain two major lymphocyte populations with different surface charge. The data show that the mean electrophoretic mobility of the low mobility lymphocytes was independent of the strain. By contrast, some H-2 haplotypes give 8% difference in surface charge of high mobility lymphocytes. These results suggest that the H-2 region plays a role in the regulation of ionized groups of cell surface in some but not all populations of spleen lymphocytes. The high and low mobility lymphocyte populations are assumed to represent T and B lymphocytes, respectively. The proportions of T lymphocytes obtained with electrophoretic marker were higher than those observed in other strains with currently available markers. It is suggested that the high mobility population contains T and "null" lymphocytes. Moreover, the data show that the H-2 region controls the relative proportions of T (or T and "null") and B lymphocytes, the H-2s specificity inducing a B/T ratio different from that induced by other specificities.