Generation of immunological memory in tolerant mice.

Adult mice pretreated with dinitrophenylated isologous gamma globulins respond very poorly to the hapten presented in immunogenic form. However, the responses of such tolerized and primed animals, or the spleen cells from such mice on adoptive transfer, to small doses of soluble antigen revealed normal secondary responsiveness in terms of size of response, relative affinities of the antibodies produced and antigenic sensitivity. In contrast, mice tolerized in early life and subsequently primed showed diminished responsiveness to secondary challenge, both in the original animals and on adoptive transfer. In this instance cells producing high affinity antibodies seemed to be preferentially deleted.