Studies on Tolerance of the Y Chromosome Antigen in Mice

[摘要] The principle of immunologic tolerance has been employed to study the isoantigen—usually referred to as the Y-factor—that is responsible for the rejection of male skin isografts by female mice of many different inbred strains. Various lines of evidence are presented that lend strong support to the view that this antigen is determined by a locus on the Y chromosome and that it behaves in all respects like the tissue transplantation antigens responsible for the destruction of tissue homografts. Tolerance of male skin isografts, like tolerance of skin homografts, can be abolished by transfer of normal or sensitized lymphoid cells from a genetically appropriate donor.Exactly the same Y antigen appears to be present in all male mice, irrespective of their strain of origin, as evidenced by the fact that C57 female mice could be made tolerant of subsequent male skin isografts by inoculation at birth with male cells derived from any one of four different and unrelated donor strains.The tolerance-responsive period of C57 female mice to this fairly weak antigen was found to be of the order of 17 days.Because of the very high degree of toleranceresponsiveness of C57 females to the Y antigen, this simple tolerance system has been employed to investigate several fundamental aspects of transplantation immunology. For example, it has been found possible to render female mice tolerant of male skin isografts by repeated inoculations with high dosages of a cell-free extract of male lymphoid cells. Highly suggestive evidence has also been obtained that persistence of tolerance of the Y antigen does not require persistence of the antigen.

[学科分类] 生物科学（综合）