A pilot study evaluating the utility of commercially available antibodies for flow cytometric analysis of Panthera species lymphocytes
Date
2018-12-19
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC (part of Springer Nature)
Abstract
Background: The immune response against tuberculosis in lions is still poorly defined and our understanding is
hampered by the lack of lion specific reagents. The process for producing antibodies against a specific antigen is
laborious and not available to many research laboratories. As the search for antibody cross-reactivity is an important
strategy for immunological studies in veterinary medicine, we have investigated the use of commercially available
antibodies to characterize T cell subsets in African lions (Panthera leo).
Results: Commercially available antibodies were screened and investigated the influence of two different sample
processing methods, as well as the effect of time delay on cell surface marker expression on lion lymphocytes.
Using commercially available antibodies, we were able to identify CD4+, CD5+, CD8+, CD14+, CD25+, CD44+ and
CD45+ T lymphocytes in samples obtained by density gradient centrifugation as well as red cell lysis of lion whole
blood. Two distinct lymphocyte populations, which differed in size and phenotype, were observed in the samples
processed by density gradient centrifugation.
Conclusion: Commercially available antibodies are able to differentiate between T lymphocyte subsets including
immune effector cells in African lion whole blood, and possibly give insight into unique specie phenotypes.
Description
The original publication is available at https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com
Keywords
African lion hound, Flow cytometery, Immunophenotyping, Panthera leo
Citation
Sylvester, T. T., et al. 2017. A pilot study evaluating the utility of commercially available antibodies for flow cytometric analysis of Panthera species lymphocytes. BMC Veterinary Research, 14:410, doi:10.1186/s12917-018-1717-4