[Transmission of "regenerative" information by lymphocytes from rats with extensive intestinal resections].

Lymphocytes from male F1 rats (August X black Wistar) with a resected half of the small intestine (10 cm after stomach) are capable to stimulate the mitotic activity in the epithelium of small intestinal and esophageal crypts in syngeneic recipients. The correlation of the mitotic phases in experimental animals remained unchanged whereas the number of cells in experimental recipients' crypts significantly increased, thereby attesting to genuine stimulation of the proliferation. Lymphocytes from sham-operated rats failed to demonstrate such a property. In control recipients the mitotic index and the cell number in the crypt of the control recipients did not differ significantly from the appropriate characteristics in intact rats of the same age.