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Setting it Straight - Issue #32

Written by Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty

Following on from the past three weeks…

Back when I joined the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) in late 1973, their animal breeding facility was producing three inbred mouse lines – CBA/H, BALB/CJ and Miss Abbie Lathrop’s C57BL/6J (B6). The terminology for the H-2 system MHC class I (MHCI) genes is arcane and historic (the H-2ᵏ CBA/H strain is H-2KᵏDᵏ). Simplifying that here, we’ll identify the mouse H-2 haplotypes as X, Y and Z and the transplant genes mapping to the MHC class I (MHC1) H-2K and H-2D loci as: X1X2 (CBA/H), Y1Y2 (BALB/CJ) and Z1Z2 (C57Bl6/J). All six of these X1X2  Y1Y2 and Z1Z2 genes are completely different with there also being no shared themes for those at the H-2K versus the H-2D locus.