Differences between exogenous and endogenous hemopoietic spleen colonies

Histologic examination of the spleens in RFM/Un mice killed 6 to 9 days after 350 to 800 R whole‐body x‐irradiation revealed hemopoietic colonies, the numbers of which decreased exponentially with increasing radiation dose. In such animals, myelocytic colonies were the predominant type on the sixth to the eighth day. However, they decreased in number with time, being fewer than erythropoietic colonies by the ninth day after irradiation. In C57BL mice, erythropoietic colonies were relatively more numerous, markedly predominating on both the eighth and the thirteenth days. RFM/Un mice injected with nonirradiated syngeneic bone marrow cells within 24 hours after 750 R developed colonies, predominantly of erythropoietic and undifferentiated types, the numbers of which were proportional to the numbers of marrow cells injected. The number of colonies formed from exogenous marrow cells increased slightly between the sixth and ninth days after inoculation, possibly because of a greater likelihood of counting them due to an increase in their size.