Sheep red blood cell-specific helper activity in rat thoracic duct lymphocyte populations positively selected for reactivity to specific strong histocompatibility alloantigens.

These studies show that positively selected T-cell populations, having enriched reactivity in the mixed lymphocyte interaction and the graft-versus-host reaction to strong alloantigens of a chosen major histocompatibility complex haplotype, also possess helper activity which is quantitatively normal in the generation of primary antibody responses to sheep red blood cells in vitro. Such positively selected populations give a linear dose plaque-forming cells response curve indistinguishable from that seen with normal unselected T-cell populations. These findings imply that T cells reactive to histocompatibility antigens also react to conventional antigens, and the possibility is raised that they may do so by some recognition mechanism involving multiple specificities.