An impairment of antibody production in adoptively restored, lethally irradiated thymectomized mice.

Lethally irradiated, bone marrow protected, normal and thymectomized adult mice were given 140–250 × 10 syngeneic spleen and lymph node cells from normal or sensitized donors. These mice were tested at intervals following irradiation for their ability to reject allogeneic and xenogeneic skin grafts and to produce haemagglutinins. The results show that adoptively restored, thymectomized mice are capable of responding normally to skin homografts of varying antigenic disparity and of producing haemagglutinins to xenogeneic antigens. However, the majority of the mice which received lymphoid cells from normal donors were unable to produce haemagglutinating antibody in response to allogeneic antigens. Both 19S and 7S antibody were produced by the thymectomized mice.