Analysis on the types of chemokines expressed by the murine thymic epithelial cell line MTEC1

Six kinds of chemokines including SDF-1α, IP-10, KC, RANTES, MCP-1 and Lymphotactin have been amplified using the primers designed by ourselves with RT-PCR from the total RNA of a medullary-type murine thymic epithelial cell line MTEC1 cells. The amplified cDNA fragments of the chemokines have been identified by nucleotide sequencing and Northern blot analysis. The results demonstrate that there are two different splicing forms of SDF-1 mRNA existing in MTEC1. The concentrated culture supernatant of MTEC1 shows an intermediate level of chemotaxis to CD4⁻CD8⁻ thymocytes, which conforms to the biological function of SDF-1.