The Importance of θ and Ig Bearing Cells in the Immune Response to Various Antigens

Abstract

Transfers of normal and/or immune BALB/c spleen cells into x-irradiated syngeneic recipients were performed in order to characterize further the nature of memory cells. Incubation of the cells with antisera to either the θ-antigen or to mouse immunoglobulin in the presence of C was used to remove selectively T-cells (θ-bearing) or B-cells (Ig-bearing). Primary and secondary responses to Brucella abortus (BA) were reduced by incubation with anti-Ig but were unaffected by removal of T-cells, suggesting the thymus-independence of this response. Responses to sheep erythrocytes (SE) were always greatly inhibited after incubation of the cells with anti-θ, while being reduced to a variable extent by anti-Ig. With DNP-hemocyanin as the antigen, primary and early memory responses were unaffected by anti-θ, whereas the late memory response to this antigen was greatly reduced by such treatment. Addition of equal numbers of untreated normal spleen cells to antisera treated immune spleen cells resulted in minimal reconstitution of the memory responses. Such reconstitution was only obtained by recombination of anti-θ and anti-Ig treated immune spleen cells. It is concluded that immunologic memory can be expressed by both the B- and the T-lymphoid cell lines in the mouse.