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Abstract
The capacity of retinal vessels to incorporate tritiated thymidine was studied in normal rats and in rats previously exposed to ocular trauma for the purpose of developing a model for the study of neovascularization in the retina. Needle puncture of the lens capsule caused intraocular inflammation and a 30- to 70-fold increase in the number of venular endothelial cells which incorporated tritiated thymidine. The time course of entry of venular endothelial cells into the S-phase of the cell cycle was studied following lens injury. An increase in the frequency of labeled cells was first detected six hours after lens injury and two hours after the appearance of leukocytes within the lumen of vessels. The number of endothelial cells in S-phase peaked sharply at eight hours and again at 40 hours following lens injury, indicating cell synchrony and a 32-hour duration for the complete cell cycle.