The life-span and recirculation of marrow-derived small lymphocytes from the rat thoracic duct.

These experiments describe the preparation of pure marrow-derived lymphocyte suspensions from the thoracic duct of thymectomized, irradiated rats reconstituted with bone marrow cells. The majority of marrow-derived cells were small lymphocytes morphologically indistinguishable from small lymphocytes in thoracic duct lymph of normal donors. Marrow-derived small lymphocytes (B lymphocytes) were a predominantly long-lived population; the frequency of short-lived B lymphocytes in the thoracic duct was not significantly higher than the frequency of short-lived small lymphocytes in normal lymph. B lymphocytes transferred to normal recipients recirculated from blood to lymph. The first appearance of intravenously injected B lymphocytes in the thoracic duct was delayed relative to lymphocytes from normal donors and there was no clear cut modal recirculation time. Nevertheless their recirculation over a 48 hr period after transfusion was of the same order of magnitude as that of lymphocytes from normal donors.