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Unidirectional Responses to Mls Determinants in Vivo
Author(s) -
HOSONO M.,
KINA T.,
KATSURA Y.,
HOSOKAWA T.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of immunology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.934
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1365-3083
pISSN - 0300-9475
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-3083.1988.tb02434.x
Subject(s) - in vivo , biology , genetics
Polyclonal anti‐Mls responses of peripheral (mature) and thymic (immature) lymphocytes were studied in vivo in terms of local host‐versus‐graft and graft‐versus‐host reactions. The level of stimulatory activity differed between the various types of Mls antigens, with Mls a and Mls d having the highest levels, Mls c a lower level, and Mls b the lowest level. The immunogenicity of Mls a and Mls d may not be identical, since Mls d mice responded to the Mls d determinant, while Mls a mice did not react with the Mls d determinants. This suggests that the anti‐Mls response is unidirectional. The fact that Mls b mice made tolerant at birth to Mls d (Mls a ) antigens behave like Mls d (Mls a ) mice when responding to Mls antigens supports this suggestion. Furthermore, thymus cells from the Mls a ‐tolerized BALB/c (Mls b ) mice were unresponsive to both Mls a and Mls d antigens, while those made tolerant to Mls d were responsive to Mls a . These results indicate that the polyclonal response to the strongly immunogenic Mls a d antigens is unidirectional, and that the immunogenicity of Mls a and Mls d is not identical. Based on the results of tolerance experiments and data on T‐cell clones, we suggest that the difference in immunogenicity between Mls a. b. d antigens is due to different efficiencies of the responding T‐cell populations, probably because of a quantitative difference in a single common antigenic determinant expressed in each Mls haplotype, which results in different levels of stimulation of T cells according to the avidity for the determinant.