Southern blot analysis of BII cell line - A putative variant of HL-60

Southern blot analysis of various genes was used to compare the human promyelocytic leukemia cell line HL-60 and the BII cell line, which reportedly arose as a spontaneous differentiation inducer-resistant variant from an HL-60 culture. Granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor gene restriction fragment polymorphism, due to a partial deletion of one of the alleles of this gene in HL-60, was not observed in the BII cells. Furthermore, the p53 oncogene, most of which is deleted in the HL-60 cell line, was found to be intact in the BII cell line. Human leukocyte antigen typing revealed that the two cell lines shared the A locus but differed at the B locus. Several unique restriction fragments hybridizing to human leukocyte antigen class I and DR beta gene probes were observed in the DNA digests of each cell line. Altogether these data provide definitive evidence that BII represents a human cell line of different origin than HL-60. Further lineage determination of this cell could add a useful member to the group of leukemic cell lines.