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Abstract
Various types of mononuclear cell populations, presumably differing in their content of macrophage‐ and immunoblast precursor cells, were obtained by sampling rat thoracic duct lymph or by isolation of mononuclear cells from blood of intact or lymph‐drained rats. The cells, which were suspended in diluted rat or mouse plasma, were cultured for three or five days in cell‐impermeable diffusion chambers. The chamber recipients were rats, mice or irradiated mice. The proliferation, differentiation and death of the chamber cells were quantified by cell counting and radio‐autographic evaluation.Thoracic duct lymph was shown to contain about 1–10 macrophage precursor cells per 106 lymphocytes. The precursor cell might be a monocyte and its presence in lymph is possibly related to the cannulation procedure. The small macrophage populations of the chambers containing lymph cells proliferated with a population doubling time of approximately 10 hours. Macrophage proliferation appeared to be stimulated by the presence of blast cells and inhibited by mature, differentiated macrophages.