FIGURE 10.

H2-calponin-free macrophages had enhanced phagocytosis. Residential (A) and elicited (B) peritoneal cells isolated from h2-calponin knock-out (KO) and wild type (WT) mice were incubated with red fluorescent carboxyl microspheres to test phagocytosis activity. In the representative flow cytometric histograms of the F4/80-positive WT and KO macrophages, the x axis represents the fluorescent intensity indicating phagocytosis of the beads and the y axis indicates the gating for macrophages (upper panels) and the relative cell counts (lower panels). The peaks from left to right represent cell populations with no bead-ingested, 1 bead ingested, and 2 to more than 5 bead ingested. C, the phagocytosis activities measured on peritoneal residential (n = 7 for both WT and KO) and 72-h elicited (n = 7 for WT, n = 5 for KO) macrophages are summarized as phagocytosis index (percent of beads-ingested cells × mean florescence intensity of cells containing beads). The data demonstrated an enhanced phagocytosis activity of both residential and elicited macrophages when h2-calponin was absent (*, p < 0.05).