H-2 HISTOCOMPATIBILITY ANTIGENS OF THE 



MOUSE 



D. A. L. Davies 



Microbiological Research Establishment, Porton, Salisbury 



The purification of antigens which distinguish one kind of 

 inbred mouse strain from another may be followed by a variety 

 of methods, including, for example, the hastening of allogeneic 

 skin graft rejection, the enhancement of tumour growth in 

 allogeneic strains, and inhibition of haemagglutination. There 

 are other possibilities which have not been taken advantage of for 

 this purpose (Simonsen, 1961). The skin grafting and enhance- 

 ment tests have an unfavourable dose-response relationship but in 

 spite of this they have been used with considerable success. 



Although the general feeling is that the specificity of trans- 

 plantation (T), enhancing (E) and histoconipatibihty(H) antigens 

 is hkely to be basically the same, there are differences which have 

 to be explained. The answer to such problems should be within 

 reach when purified products are available for study. The work 

 described here is a contribution to our knowledge of H-2 

 antigens, a haemagglutination inhibition test having been used 

 to follow purification. The test hmits one to antigens whose 

 distribution is controlled by the H-2 locus, since other H antigens 

 are not usually detectable on red cells by this method. The 

 relationship of the products to T and E antigens will be described 

 in due course. 



For T, E and H antigens we have the information that activity 

 is closely bound to the insoluble structural part of the cell 

 (Billingham, Brent and Medawar, 1956, 1958; Kandutsch and 

 Reinert-Wenck, 1957; Kandutsch, i960; Herzenberg and 



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