Lyt phenotype, lymphocyte migration and the selective tissue positioning of mouse T cell sets

Functionally defined mouse Lyt-1 and Lyt-2 cell sets were selected from peripheral lymph nodes by cytotoxic elimination with anti-Lyt monoclonal antibodies. The selected populations were labelled with 51Cr or [3H]-adenosine and traced in syngeneic recipients at 1, 24, 45 and 65 hr after intravenous injection. Recovered radioactivity in recipient organs was measured by gamma-counting. The exact tissue positioning of the labelled cells was determined by autoradiography and labelled cell counting in spleen, lymph node and Peyer's patch microenvironments. Selected cell sets differed from unselected T cells in two ways: (i) Selected Lyt-1 and Lyt-2 cells showed some decline in recovery from recipient lymph nodes at 24 hr after injection; (ii) Lyt-2 cells showed enhanced localization to Peyer's patches. Autoradiographic analysis of microenvironmental tissue positioning of [3H]-adenosine labelled cells confirmed a relatively higher localization of Lyt-2 cells in Peyer's patches than in lymph nodes. In both tissues, the majority of the labelled cells were found in T areas. In the spleen, a higher proportion of Lyt-2 cells was seen in T-independent follicular areas.