[Hematopoietic stem cells (CFUc) in athymic mice. II. The morphological composition of splenic colonies formed by 11-day-old CFUc from the bone marrow of thymectomized mice].

The author studied the effect of the animal's age and marrow donor's thymectomy on differential potentials of CFUc by morphological structure of the splenic colonies. Bone marrow from thymectomized mice (TEM) was examined 1-25 months after thymectomy. Intact age-matched animals served control. The age of mice-donors had no influence on morphological types of the colonies formed by the marrow injected i. v. to irradiated recipients. TEM marrow developed all types of colonies known (erythroid, granulocytic, megakaryocytic, non-differentiated and mixed), though their percentage differs from the control. This is true for 11-day, but not for 8-day colonies. Among the 11-day colonies formed by TEM marrow the portion of megakaryocytes increased 3-fold, while mixed colonies were slow in formation when compared to the control.