Abstract
The addition of mixtures of anti-allotypic sera to cultures of lymphocytes obtained from allotypically heterozygous donors causes a greater amount of “blast” transformation than the sum of the maxima that can be obtained with each anti-allotypic serum added separately. This “superaddition” of anti-allotypically induced transformation implies that the expression of allotypic specificities by lymphocytes is not limited to one allele (allelic exclusion), as has been found for plasma cells. Therefore, the expression of genetically controlled immunoglobulin antigenic specificities by lymphocytes appears to be less restricted than that by plasma cells. Plasma cells may become restricted in regard to immunoglobulin expression during differentiation from precursor cells that are not so restricted.
Footnotes
This work was supported in part by United States Public Health Service Research Grants AI-07125 and AI-07712, by Research Career Development Award AI-23308 from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, and by the Medical Research Council of Great Britain. This work was undertaken during the term of a Travel Fellowship awarded to Dr. Sell by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
