Transcription factor effects on chromosome constitution of cell hybrids

When immunoglobulin (Ig)-secreting plasmacytomas are fused to a T-cell lymphoma, Ig gene expression ceases in greater than 95% of the resulting hybrids. In the rare hybrids that continue to express Ig, all other tested B lymphocyte-specific genes also remain active. The low frequency with which these Ig-expressing hybrids are recovered, along with the fact that cell fusions can lead to chromosome loss, led us to propose that this rare phenotype was due to loss of a T-cell-derived chromosome encoding a factor or factors with gene silencing activity. To identify the relevant chromosome, we have used a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-assisted method of chromosome mapping to analyze both Ig-silenced (common) and Ig-expressing (rare) hybrids. Although no single chromosome was found to correlate with Ig gene silencing, we discovered that the two types of hybrids had undergone distinct patterns of chromosome loss. Moreover, we found that ectopic expression of a B-cell-specific transcription factor (Oct-2) dramatically altered both the phenotype and chromosome constitution of hybrids arising in these cell fusions.