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Progenitor cells that are recognized by their ability to form colonies of descendants in the spleens of irradiated mice have the capacity for self-renewal. The distribution of new colony-forming cells per colony is extremely heterogeneous, indicating lax control of self-renewal. The capacities of colony-forming cells for self-renewal, for extensive proliferation, and for giving rise to differentiated descendants, fulfill three requirements for studies of stem cells. Thus, colony-forming cells may be considered to be class (though not necessarily the only class) of such progenitor cells, and the spleen colony method is a quantitative method for their detection. Journal of Cellular and Comparative Physiology copyright 1963 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company (www.interscience.Wiley.com).
Siminovitch et al. (Sun,) studied this question.