Female popliteal lymph node responses to H-Y antigen on male thymocytes in mice. II. H-2 restriction of secondary responses.

C57BL/10 (abbreviation B10) female mice give a high primary popliteal lymph node (PLN) response to syngeneic male thymocytes. The PLN response to the H-Y antigen is suppressed if B10 females are primed by an intraperitoneal injection of syngeneic male cells. Suppression of the response can be induced by priming with not only syngeneic B10 male thymocytes but also allogeneic thymocytes which share the H-2D locus of the H-2b haplotype with the responder (Db restriction). On the other hand, B10.D2, B10.A, and HTO female mice, giving a low primary PLN response to H-Y, give high secondary PLN responses when primed intraperitoneally with syngeneic male thymocytes. A high secondary response can also be obtained by priming with allogeneic male thymocytes which share the K end loci (K, A beta, A alpha, E beta, and E alpha) of the H-2 complex with the responder. Apparently the male thymocytes used for priming must share class I (and possibly class II) H-2 loci with the female recipients to enable the recognition of the H-Y antigen and subsequent development of the genetically determined type (suppression or amplification) of the secondary PLN response.