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. 1969 Dec;17(6):955–967.

Subpopulations of rat and mouse thoracic duct small lymphocytes in the Salmonella flagellar antigen system*

Heather Lewis, Judith Mitchell, G J V Nossal
PMCID: PMC1456027  PMID: 5386639

Abstract

The purpose of the present experiments was to determine whether populations of lymphocytes from mouse or rat thoracic duct lymph deprived of the larger, dividing cells (large and medium lymphocytes) could still transfer adequate primary or secondary adoptive immune responses using syngeneic irradiated hosts. The transfer system used involved the antigen polymerized flagellin from Salmonella adelaide and assay of anti-H antibody levels in the recipients. Two methods of preparation of `small lymphocytes' were used, namely the glass bead column filtration method of Shortman and the agitated culture method of Gowans and Uhr (1966). Both of these yield lymphocyte fractions essentially free of dividing cells.

Unfractionated thoracic duct lymphocytes gave satisfactory adoptive immune responses in both species, primed cells being more effective than normal cells.

In both species and for both primary and secondary immune responses, the Shortman-column fractionated small lymphocytes (col-SL) were grossly impaired in their capacity to transfer adoptive responses. In contrast, the Gowans-type post-incubation small lymphocytes (inc-SL) gave rather better adoptive immune responses. Gowans and Uhr (1966) had found some enhancement of reactivity of inc-SL in comparison with normal lymph cells in another transfer system. We, however, found a mild impairment with unstimulated mouse and rat inc-SL and primed rat inc-SL and a slightly more marked impairment with primed mouse inc-SL.

We have confirmed the finding of Gowans and Uhr (1966) that lymphocyte populations free of dividing cells can mount an adoptive antibody response, showing that a proportion, at least, of the antigen-reactive cells can be described as `small lymphocytes'. The study also revealed the functional heterogeneity of morphologically similar lymphocytes, in that col-SL, morphologically the same as inc-SL, are functionally quite different; they appear to contain very few antigen-reactive cells. In the Salmonella system, therefore, the antigen-reactive thoracic duct cells can be described as lymphocytes which are fairly resistant to agitated culture but which fail to pass through Shortman columns.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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