Murine blood monocyte subsets

Monocytes and their lineage descendants serve as a central defense system against infection and injury but if uncontrolled can also promote an excessive pathological inflammatory response. Therefore a current research goal is to understand how the organism controls the number and function of monocytes and how these variables can be tailored in therapy. Considering the evidence that monocytes are heterogeneous and exist in at least two subsets committed to divergent functions, we investigated whether distinct factors regulate the balance between monocyte subset responses in vivo. Here we investigate the differential expression of mRNA among murine steady-state monocyte subsets. Blood was drawn from healthy C57BL/6 donors. For each biological replicate 1000 monocytes of the Ly-6Chi and Ly-6Clo phenotype were isolated from the blood sample through fluorescence activated cell sorting.