Mixed Lymphocyte Cultures with Inbred Individuals: An Approach to MLC Typing

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Abstract
A Danish family with twelve members and with two first cousin marriages was studied. Two inbred siblings (designated J) were found to be homozygous for HL–A2,27 (AJ) and therefore also presumably homozygous for all or most of the major histocompatibility complex. When used as stimulators in one‐way MLC, these two individuals elicited a very low response in five members of the family possessing this same HL–A haplotype, which was clearly disjunct from the response by family members not possessing the HL–A2,27(AJ). When J cells were used as stimulators against cells from 27 unrelated individuals, the responses against J – expressed relative to the median response of a given responder against several unrelated persons – fell into two clearly disjunct groups. One group of seven gave low responses, from 13% to 41%. The individuals of this group are designated J‐like. The rest gave responses from 83 % to 132 %. In one family with three children where the father was J‐like and the mother was not J‐like, the trait J‐like segregated in coupling with the HL–A determinants. It is postulated that these specifically low responding, or J‐like, individuals possess the MLC allele j, for which the individuals J are homozygous. Among the 27 unrelated individuals tested, there was no obvious association between the MLC allele j and any particular HL–A antigen. Another inbred HL–A homozygous individual did not stimulate the family members at a low level in compatible combinations and is thus presumably not homozygous at the MLC locus.