A fundamental issue in the etiology of autoimmune diseases of the central nervous system such as multiple sclerosis and its animal counterpart experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) concerns the identity of cells capable of presenting autoantigen to the T cells that mediate these diseases. The prevailing dogma is that only bone marrow-derived cells function as APC during EAE induction. We have addressed this issue by studying EAE induction in mouse bone marrow chimeras, and have found that although bone marrow-derived APC such as macrophages and brain microglial cells are more efficient at presenting autoantigen, brain parenchymal cells such as astrocytes and endothelial cells are also capable of inducing disease. EAE was induced in these chimeras by the adoptive transfer of encephalitogenic T cell lines designed to be MHC-histocompatible with APC contained either within the hematopoietic system of the chimera or with APC resident to the brain of the chimera. The subsequent development of EAE in these chimeras then indicated which population of cells served as in vivo APC during EAE pathogenesis. Possible effects of alloreactivity between the host chimera and the adoptively transferred T cells were eliminated by using encephalitogenic T cell lines made tolerant to the haplotype(s) of the recipient chimera.