Summary
By attention to methods for preparing the donor and recipient animals and to transplantation techniques large amounts of diphtheria antitoxin and anti-bovine γ globulin were produced in virtually every experiment. It was concluded that under these conditions antibody synthesis was identical with the process in the donor. The major sites of antibody production were the popliteal and mesenteric lymph nodes, spleen and bone marrow, whereas the lung, liver and kidney were inactive. It was postulated that the cellular entity concerned with antibody production is transferred from mother to daughter cells during mitosis. By pretreatment of the lymph nodes with sheep blood the period between booster injection and transfer with antibody production was reduced from 3 days to 1 hr. By using tissue fragments rather than cells for transplantation this interval could be reduced from 3 days to 1 day. Addition of antigen to lymph node cells from primarily stimulated animals caused antibody production only when these cells were transplanted without the washing off of antigen. On the other hand, addition of antigen to splenic cells from such donors resulted in antibody formation even when the cells were washed before transplantation. Possible explanations for these observations have been discussed.
