Altered erythrocytes and a leaky block in B-cell development in CD24/HSA-deficient mice

The heat stable antigen (HSA, or murine CD24) is a glycosyl phosphatidylinositol-linked surface glycoprotein expressed on immature cells of most, if not all, major hematopoietic lineages, as well as in developing neural and epithelial cells. It has been widely used to stage the maturation of B and T lymphocytes because it is strongly induced and then repressed again during their maturation. Terminally differentiated lymphocytes, as well as most myeloid lineages, are negative for HSA. Erythrocytes are an exception in that they maintain high levels of HSA expression. HSA on naive B cells has been shown to mediate cell-cell adhesion, while HSA on antigen-presenting cells has been shown to mediate a costimulatory signal important for activating T lymphocytes during an immune response. Here, we characterize mice that lack a functional HSA gene, constructed by homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells. While T-cell and myeloid development appears normal, these mice show a leaky block in B-cell development with a reduction in late pre-B and immature B-cell populations in the bone marrow. Nevertheless, peripheral B-cell numbers are normal and no impairment of immune function could be detected in these mice in a variety of immunization and infection models. We also observed that erythrocytes are altered in HSA-deficient mice. They show a higher, tendency to aggregate and are more susceptible to hypotonic lysis in vitro. In vivo, the mean half-life of HSA-deficient erythrocytes was reduced. When infected with the malarial parasite Plasmodium chabaudi chabaudi, the levels of parasite-bearing erythrocytes in HSA-deficient mice were also significantly elevated, but the mice were able to clear the infection with kinetics similar to wild-type mice and were immune to a second challenge. Thus, apart from alterations in erythrocytes and a mild block in B-cell development, the regulated expression of HSA appears to be dispensable for the maturation and functioning of those cell lineages that normally express it.