Lymphocyte transformation induced by autologous cells. II. Stimulation by mitogen-induced lymphoblasts.

Overview

Lymphocytes incubated with phytohemagglutinin or concanavalin A develop the capacity to stimulate autologous lymphocyte transformation. This is not attributable to residual mitogen contaminating the lymphoblastic cell preparation as: (a) the dissociation of mitogen from the lymphoblastic cell preparation increases the degree of stimulation observed and (b) the kinetics of lymphocyte transformation stimulated by phytohemagglutinin-induced lymphoblasts is different from that stimulated by phytohemagglutinin. The appearance of the stimulatory determinants on lymphocytes exposed to phytohemagglutinin precedes morphological transformation.