Functional analysis of pokeweed mitogen-dependent cell interactions in murine spleen cells. I. Lack of B-cell mitogenicity and low frequency of effector helper T cells.

The nature of lymphocyte responses on addition of pokeweed mitogen (PWM) to normal murine spleen cells was studied in low cell density cultures. PWM, over a wide range of concentrations, stimulated proliferation in a set of cells roughly 10-fold smaller than the lymphocyte populations responding to either concanavalin A or lipopolysaccharide. PWM also induced a relatively small number of B lymphocytes in these cultures to mature to Ig-secreting plaque-forming cells (PFC). Proliferative and PFC responses were completely abrogated by T-cell removal from normal spleen cell cultures. Moreover, cell mixture and irradiation experiments demonstrated that B lymphocytes do not proliferate in response to PWM, even in the presence of an excess of normal T cells, suggesting that PFC development results from terminal maturation without proliferation. Finally, parallel titrations of cloned helper cells, normal splenic T cells or T-cell blasts induced by PWM showed that the poor B-lymphocyte responses in normal spleen cell cultures is due to the very low frequency of competent helper cells in these populations. PWM, however, was competent to activate and expand this set of helper lymphocytes in primary cultures.