Identification of Consensus Genes Expressed in Plasmacytomas but Not B Lymphomas

Abstract

Mouse plasmacytoma cell lines differ from pre-B and B lymphoma cell lines by a number of notable features: 1) the distinctive plasmacytoid morphology including extensive and well-developed rough endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus (Matter et al. 1972, Potter 1987); 2) the lack of expression of some B cell markers (e.g. la antigens) (Boothby et al. 1988); 3) the lack of significant c-myc mRNA expression from the normal allele, which correlates with the presence of plasmacytoma repressor factor (PRF) gel-shift activity (Kakkis et al. 1989); 4) quantitatively increased expression of immunoglobulin; and 5) the consistent dominance of the plasmacytoma phenotype in hybrids with all B cells, including normal B cells and tumor B cell lines (Wall and Kuehl 1983). Our goal is to determine if there are consensus genes which are expressed in murine plasmacy-tomas, but not in B lymphomas. We have combined subtractive cDNA and PCR technologies to construct and analyze a plasmacytoma minus highly differentiated B lymphoma subtractive cDNA library.