Exogenous KGF thymocyte development in fetal thymus organ culture.
(A) Representation of CD4/CD8 expression by thymocytes from thymic lobes cultured in medium or medium containing KGF. Dead cells were excluded from the analysis on the basis of staining with 7AAD and forward/side scatter profiles. Values represent percentage of cells within each region of the plot. These results are representative of 8 independent experiments. (B) Flow cytometric analysis of MHC class II expression by TE dissociated from DOG-treated lobes. Heavy line depicts lobes cultured in KGF, and the light line represents DOG-treated lobes cultured in the absence of KGF. (C) Flow cytometric analysis of MHC class II expression by AND41.2 TE cell line cultured in medium or 40 U/mL of IFNγ. (D) Immunoblot detection of invariant chain (Ii) by TE cells recovered from DOG-treated lobes cultured in the absence or presence of KGF. (E) Upper panel depicts detection of cathepsin L (Cat L) with a specific polyclonal rabbit antiserum in TE cultured in medium or KGF. Lower panel demonstrates that comparable levels of actin were detected in the same control and KGF-treated samples. (F) Active site labeling of cathepsins present in lysates of 2 × 105 TE cells recovered from DOG-treated lobes cultured in the absence or presence of recombinant KGF. Cathepsin B and cathepsin L are indicated. These results are representative of 5 independent experiments.
