Part played by Deoxyribonucleic Acid in Transplantation Immunity

Abstract

THE tissue incompatibility revealed by homografting is due to individual antigenic differences that cause the recipient to produce an immunity response to tissues grafted from another individual. Billingham, Brent and Medawar¹ used a transplantation immunity test in inbred strains of mice when studying the antigens responsible for the homograft reaction, and formulated the hypothesis that nuclear nucleo-proteins or lipoproteins associated with them were responsible for transplantation immunity. The activity of nuclear fragments was not destroyed by the action of ribonuclease or trypsin but was destroyed by the action of deoxyribonuclease. We therefore decided to test whether tissue deoxyribonucleic acid itself acts as an antigenic stimulus in homotransplantation.