Syngeneic preference manifested by thymic stroma during development of thymocytes from bone marrow cells

The question whether major histocompatibility complex (MHC) recognition is expressed in interactions between thymocyte progenitors and thymic stroma cells was investigated in an organ culture system, in which inductive interactions between thymic stroma cells and thymocyte progenitors of different MHC haplotypes could be measured. Thymocyte‐depleted fetal thymuses were reconstituted with mixtures of syngeneic and allogeneic bone marrow cells, which also differed in their Thy‐1 allele. The relative repopulating ability of the cells was estimated by determining the percentages of emerging Thy‐1.1⁺ vs. Thy‐1.2⁺ thymocytes. Similar values of Thy‐1⁺ cells of the bone marrow donor type developed when the thymuses were reconstituted by bone marrow from donors which were either syngeneic or allogeneic to the thymic explants. However, when a 1:1 mixture of syngeneic and allogeneic cells was applied to the thymus, a syngeneic preference was manifested in development of Thy‐1⁺ cells. When mixtures of bone marrow cells from C57BL/Ka (Thy‐1.1) and B10.A MHC‐congenic (Thy‐1.2) mice were used, this developmental preference was found to map to the I‐E region. Thymocytes derived from bone marrow cells allogeneic to the stroma, seeded on their own, manifested an advantage over allogeneic bone marrow cells from a different MHC haplotype, in a secondary reconstitution. This suggested that allogeneic bone marrow progenitor cells can be “educated” by the host thymic stroma to behave, in the competitive reconstitution, like syngeneic cells.