Hello Daniel,

first of all I admitt that I do not have experience with rabbit neutrophils. But I worked a lot with neutrophils of rats and humans. Independently from the species, neutrophils contain much lesser amounts of RNA in comparison to other circulating immune cells such as monocytes or lymphocytes.

This fact makes the RNA-Analysis of neutrophils quite difficult, since contaminating cell populations will add a significant amount of their RNA.

Back to your question, human neutrophils express CD16B (Fc-gamma-receptor IIIB) and its expression seems to be limited to neutrophils. Also members of the CD66 Family (CD66b,d) are limited to granulocytes. Maybe it is the same for rabbits.

Hence if you find transcripts of those molecules in your sample it may indicate neutrophils. I am not sure if you can deduce from the RNA-results to the number of neutrophils in your sample, since neutrophils are extremly prone to activation.

Best regards

Dirk

Thank very much Dr Henrich.