The release of soluble H-2 alloantigens during disaggregation of mouse embryo tissue by a chelating agent

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Abstract
Treatment with chelating agents binding divalent cations has been found to effect the dissociation of a variety of tissues of both embryo and adult animals (reviewed in Steinberg, 1958). In the course of dissociation it appears that materials are released from cell surfaces which play a part in their specific adhesion, and which may be shown experimentally to promote selectively the re-aggregation of dissociated cells (Humphreys, 1963; Moscona, 1963). The extracted materials appear to be glycoprotein complexes (Humphreys, 1965), made up of fairly small subunits, estimated to be of 13000-20000 molecular weight (Margoliash et al. 1965). Units of about the same size appear to be the antigenic sites involved in the blocking of sponge cell aggregation by rabbit anti-sponge serum, specific for a given sponge species (MacLennan, 1963). I shall here present evidence that materials of similar molecular weight bearing immunological specificities of the H-2 alloantigen system are released from the tissues of certain mouse embryos during the course of their dissociation by the chelating agent Versene (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid).