Mathematical Modeling Reveals Kinetics of Lymphocyte Recirculation in the Whole Organism
Figure 5
Antigen-stimulated popliteal lymph nodes (pLN) accumulate higher numbers of Cr-labeled TDLs because of increased entrance rate of TDLs into the LN.
We plot the percent of labeled TDLs found in the antigen-stimulated (dots) and resting (triangles) popliteal LNs. Model fits of the data are shown by lines. We found that the entrance rate into stimulated and unstimulated pLNs is min
and
min
, respectively. Exit rate of lymphocytes from antigen-stimulated and unstimulated pLNs are
min
and
min
(two sub-compartments in the LNs,
). To describe the dynamics of TDLs in the blood and other organs we used parameters given in Table 1. Our results suggest that antigenic stimulation of the lymph node with sheep erythrocytes increases the rate of entrance of TDLs into the LN almost 4 fold without a significant change in the lymphocyte exit rate (
,
).