Phenotypically distinct B cell development pathways map to the three B cell lineages in the mouse

A recent article by Montecino-Rodriguez et al. [Montecino-Rodriguez, E., Leathers, H. & Dorshkind, K. (2006) Nat. Immunol. 7, 293-301] has distinguished the early progenitors for B-1 cells, which principally develop in neonates, from early progenitors for B-2 cells, which principally develop in adult bone marrow. Here we introduce syndecan-1 (CD138) and MHC class II (I-A) as markers of early B cell development [Hardy, R. R., Carmack, C. E., Shinton, S. A., Kemp, J. D. & Hayakawa, K. (1991) J. Exp. Med. 173, 1213-1225; Hardy fractions B-D] and show that the expression of these markers distinguishes the predominant B cell development pathway in neonates from the corresponding predominant pathway in adults (both progenitors are present but differently represented in each case). We show that pre-B cells (Hardy fraction D) in the predominant adult pathway express high levels of CD138 and intermediate levels of I-A, whereas the corresponding pre-B cells in the pathway that predominates in neonates do not express either of these markers. As expected, because most of the pre-B cells in adults express CD138, we find that sorted CD138⁺ adult pre-B cells differentiate to IgM⁺ B cells in vitro. Sorted CD138^- pre-B cells from neonates, the majority subset at this age, also mature to IgM⁺ cells (without passing through a CD138 ⁺ stage). Importantly, our studies here confirm the differential representation of adult and neonatal progenitor populations and further demonstrate that CD138 expression subdivides the adult CD19⁺, B220-6B2^-/low population shown to contain B-1 progenitors in a way consistent with the predominance of B-1b progenitors in adults. Thus, CD138 expression provides a key route to distinguishing early B cell development pathway for what now are clearly three B cell lineages.