Abstract.A monoclonal antibody (anti-ctsm-1) recognizing exclusively a-smooth muscle actin was selected and characterized after immunization of BALB/c mice with the NH2-terminal synthetic decapeptide of a-smooth muscle actin coupled to keyhole limpet hemocyanin. Anti-ctsm-1 helped in distinguishing smooth muscle cells from fibroblasts in mixed cultures such as rat dermal fibroblasts and chicken embryo fibroblasts. In the aortic media, it recognized a hitherto unknown population of cells negative for a-smooth muscle actin and for desmin. In 5-d-old rats, this population is about half of the medial cells and becomes only 8 + 5 % in 6-wk-old animals. In cultures of rat aortic media SMCs, there is a progressive increase of this cell population together with a progressive decrease in the number of a-smooth muscle actin-containing stress fibers per cell. Double immunofluorescent studies carried out with anti-ctsm-1 and anti-desmin antibodies in several organs revealed a heterogeneity of stromal cells. Desmin-negative, a-smooth muscle actin-positive cells were found in the rat intestinal muscularis mucosae and in the dermis around hair follicles. Moreover, desmin-positive, a-smooth muscle actin-negative cells were identified in the intestinal submucosa, rat testis interstitium, and uterine stroma, a-Smooth muscle actin was also found in myoepithelial cells of mammary and salivary glands, which are known to express cytokeratins. FinaUy, ~t-smooth muscle actin is present in stromal cells of mammary carcinomas, previously considered fibroblastic in nature. Thus, anti-asm-1 antibody appears to be a powerful probe in the study of smooth muscle differentiation in normal and pathological conditions. T HOUGH actin is one of the most conserved eukaryotic proteins, it is expressed in mammals and birds as six isoforms characterized by two-dimensional (2D)-PAGE and amino acid sequence analysis (14,49,56,57,59). Four of them represent differentiation markers of muscle tissues and two are found practically in all cells (56,57). Actin isoforms show >90% overall sequence homology, but only 50-60% homology in their 18 NH2-terminal residues (56, 57). The NH2-terminal region of actin appears to be a major antigenic region (2, 5, 34) and may be involved in the interaction of actin with other proteins such as myosin (31).Little is presently known about the function of actin isoforms. It has been shown that the relative proportions of actin isoforms are different in smooth muscles of different organs (12, 47; Skalli, O., J. Vandekerckhove, and G. Gabbiani, manuscript submitted for publication) and change within the same population of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) t during development (23, 24), pathological situations (11, 21), and different culture conditions (35,46,50). In noumuscle cells, a difference in the proportions of 13-and y-cytoplasmic actins has been reported between normal and tumoral T-lympho-1. Abbreviation used in this paper: SMC, smooth muscle cell. cytes (28). All these studies have been performed on cell populations by means ...