Abstract
FE-3 cells were established by Hanashiro et al. by hybridizing mouse myeloma cells (Sp2/0-Ag14/SF) with rat spleen cells that were freshly isolated from Brown–Norway rats sensitized with DNP-As. FE-3 cells can constitutively secrete IgE without stimulation by cytokines. Our preliminary experiments demonstrated that the IgE secretion was decreased at 3 days after start of culture and the addition of exogenous IgE into culture media depressed the secretion of IgE. Thus, we hypothesized that the IgE production in FE-3 cells may be regulated by a signal transduction through the binding of IgE to its high affinity receptor (Fc∊RI) or to an IgE binding protein on the cell surface. In this study, we aimed to identify the nucleotide sequence of IgE FE-3 and compared with those of mouse IgE and IgE IR162 to find a structural heterogeneity in the Fc region of IgE FE-3. We also tested if the mRNA of Fc∊RI was expressed in FE-3 cells using the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method with the combination of sequencing analysis. Consequently, the cDNA sequence of IgE FE-3 was identical to that of the CH3 and CH4 domains in the ∊-chain of rat IgE IR162, whereas the cDNA of Fc∊RI was identical to that of mouse, suggesting that the genes of IgE FE-3 and Fc∊RI was derived from that of rat spleen cells and mouse myeloma cells, respectively.
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