Competitive Bone-marrow Transplantations

Competitive bone marrow transplantation assay measures multi-lineage reconstitution of hematopoiesis in irradiated transplant recipient mice. Thus this assay is routinely used to determine haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) functionality in vivo. The principle of the method is to transplant bone marrow donor cells (derived from transgenic mice of choice) on C57BL6 background together with normal competitor bone marrow. In order to distinguish donor from competitor cells upon transplantation, usually competitor mice are congenic and carry the differential B cell antigen originally designated Ly5.1 and CD45.1.A typical competitive bone marrow transplantation experiment will contain two transplantation groups, donor (transgenic mice of choice and their controls) are transplanted in competition with normal competitors and engraftment efficiency is evaluated in both blood and bone marrow.