Nude Syrian hamsters: some immunological and histological characteristics

Nude mutants appeared in our colony of Syrian hamsters. They were hairless and just had rudiments of thymus. Only 3.5% of splenic cells were killed by rabbit anti-hamster thymocytes serum + C' whereas 55.5% of these cells were lyzed by an anti-hamster IgG + C' and 60-70% fixed the fluorescent protein A, but could not respond either to B-cell mitogens or to rat cell mitogens. The natural cytotoxic activity of the spleen cells from nude hamsters was evaluated in comparison with the same activity expressed by spleen cells of golden Syrian hamsters.