CHAPTER LXIX 

 THE HEREDITY OF THE BLOOD GROUPS 



REUBEN OTTENBERG and DAVID BERES 



Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City 



The iso-agglutinable elements in the red blood cells with the complementary ag- 

 glutinins in the serum, described by Landsteiner in 1901, probably ofifer the most 

 favorable material for the study of inheritance in man. Every person belongs to one 

 of the four blood groups, and every family is a source of data. The problem of the 

 heredity of the blood groups is best considered under two separate phases. The one is 



TABLE I 



Constitution of the Four Blood Groups 



concerned with the proof that the iso-agglutinable elements are inherited; the other 

 with the analysis of the Mendelian mechanism involved, the relation of the genes. 



THE DATA ON INHERITANCE 

 a) THE SEROLOGICAL BASIS 



Landsteiner' in 1901 demonstrated that human beings may be divided into three 

 groups according to the interreactions of their sera and red blood cells. His pupils, 

 Decastello and Sturli,^ the next year added a fourth group. Landsteiner suggested 

 that there exist two sets of factors which are represented by the letters A and a, and 

 B and jS. A and B represent the agglutinogens in the erythrocytes; a and /3, the ag- 

 glutinins in the sera. In a given individual the presence of A in the cells excludes th2 

 presence of a in the serum. The four groups may be represented as shown in Table I. 

 The serological significance of these facts is discussed by Landsteiner elsewhere in this 

 volume.^ 



'Landsteiner, K.: Wien. klin. Wchnschr., 14, 1132. 1901. 



^Decastello, A., and Sturli, A.: Miinchen. med. Wchnschr., 49, 1090. 1902. 



3 See chap. Ixviii. 



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