The role of cellular interaction in differentiating between the occurrence of immunological tolerance and immunity following antigenic challenge

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Abstract
The response to antigenic challenge was examined in irradiated recipients of mixtures of lymphocytes from normal and sheep erythrocyte‐tolerant donors. If tolerant lymphocytes were cocultivated with normal cells in numbers similar to or greater than them, the responsiveness of the latter to subsequent challenge with sheep erythrocytes could be drastically impaired. However, the supplementation of an inoculum of normal lymphocytes with smaller numbers of tolerant cells resulted in a marked augmentation of the immune response. It is suggested that the expression of either tolerance or immunity after exposure of an animal to antigen is dependent on the size of the subpopulation of its lymphocytes that has been activated by that antigen.