Selection of antigen-specific cells by adherence to allogeneic cell monolayers: cytolytic activity, graft-vs.-host activity and numbers of adherent and nonadherent cells.

Rat lymph node cells taken at the peak of cytolytic activity following a skin allograft were separated into adherent and nonadherent fractions by incubation on monolayers of thoracic duct lymphocytes either of the same strain as the graft donor or of an Ag-B different strain. In the face of a 3-fold enrichment of cytolytic activity in the adherent cells and a 3-fold depletion in the nonadherent cells there was no detectable partition of graft-vs-host (GVH) activity. Supplementary experiments supported the simplest interpretation of this finding, namely that the antigen receptors on GVH-reactive cells did not influence their adherence in this system. Similarly, there was no partition of the GVH activity of nonimmune lymph node cells by adherence. Labeling lymph node cells with either radioactive uridine or thymidine in vitro, suggested that about 20% of DNA-synthesizing cells in the immune population adhered because of antigen recognition.