RESEARCH ARTICLE Phenotypic and Functional Characterization of Monoclonal Antibodies with Specificity for

Lectin-like molecules and their receptors are cell surface molecules that have been shown to play a role in either facilitating infection or serving as transporters of HIV/SIV in vivo. The role of these lectin-like molecules in the pathogenesis of HIV/SIV infection continues to be defined. In efforts to gain further insight on the potential role of these lectin-like molecules, our laboratory generated monoclonal antibodies (mAb) against the human analogs of rhe-sus macaque CD200, CD200R and Mincle, since the rhesus macaques are accepted as the most reliable animal model to study human HIV infection. The characterization of the cell lineages from the blood and various tissues of rhesus macaques that express these lec-tin-like molecules are described herein. Among the mononuclear cells, the cells of the mye-loid lineage of rhesus macaques are the predominant cell lineages that express readily detectable levels of CD200, CD200R and Mincle that is similar to the expression of Siglec-1 and Siglec-3 reported by our laboratory earlier. Subset analysis revealed that a higher fre-quency of the CD14+/CD16- subset from normal rhesus macaques express CD200, CD200R and Mincle. Differences in the frequencies and density of expression of these mol