The AF1-19T rat cell line has been found to produce an activity that acts synergistically with colony-stimulating factor 1 (CSF-1) to stimulate primitive high proliferative potential colony-forming cells (HPP-CFC) in mouse bone marrow (BM) that appear to be the same as those stimulated by the combination of 5637-cell-conditioned medium (CM) plus CSF-1 or recombinant human (rh) interleukin 1 (IL-1) plus recombinant murine (rm) interleukin 3 (IL-3) plus CSF-1. AF1-19T also produced granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), which could be separated from this synergistic activity by gel filtration followed by hydroxylapatite chromatography. Results obtained from the mouse thymocyte costimulation assay for IL-1, the hybridoma growth factor assay for interleukin 6 (IL-6), the ability to stimulate HPP-CFC, and the ability to block this stimulation with an antibody to murine IL-1 alpha suggest that the synergistic activity in AF1-19T-CM is probably a mixture of IL-1 activity and IL-6 or an IL-6-like activity. Other workers have described a progenitor cell population in mouse BM (CFU-A) that forms large colonies in response to AF1-19T-CM plus CSF-1 or GM-CSF plus CSF-1. Experiments involving the kinetics of recovery after 5-fluorouracil treatment and generation of progenitors suggest that the GM-CSF-plus-CSF-1-responsive progenitors, and hence CFU-A, are a more mature cell type than the more primitive HPP-CFC, responsive to 5637-cell-CM plus CSF-1 or rhIL-1 plus rmIL-3 plus CSF-1.