Long-Term B Lymphoid Cultures from Murine Bone Marrow: Establishment and Cloning by Using Stromal Cell Line AC 6.21

Nearly all hematopoietic cells in mammals derive from precursors that undergo much or all of their development in the bone marrow. In vitro models for many lineages are available and represent modifications of the original bone marrow culture system designed by Dexter and Lajtha (1 ) and described elsewhere in this book. In this chapter, we describe a second bone marrow culture system, first reported in 1982 (2 ), that provides an in vitro environment selectively supporting long-term proliferation and differentiation of early B lymphocyte lineage cells. This method can be used to obtain heterogeneous populations of immature precursors of the B cell lineage greatly enriched from other hematopoietic cell types. Clonal populations can also be obtained by extension of this method to limiting dilution culture.