Mechanisms and Assessment of Mitogenesis: An Overview

When Nowell (1) used a preparation of phytohemagglutinin (PHA) to separate red and white blood cells (a procedure described a decade earlier [2]), the consequences were far-reaching for studies of both lectins and lymphocytes The key observation was that, in addition to the expected agglutination of erythrocytes, lymphocytes were induced to grow and divide.