THE INFLUENCE OF I-E ON THE GENERATION OF AUTOANTIBODY AND SPECIFIC SUPPRESSION IN RAT ERYTHROCYTE-IMMUNIZED MICE

A proportion of the antibodies produced by mice in response to the injection of rat erythrocytes (RRBC) cross-react with autologous red cells. When spleen cells from mice so immunized are transferred to naive syngeneic recipients, the recipient mice produce high anti-RRBC antibody titres but little of no autoantibody. This phenomenon has been attributed to the action of suppressor T cells. To date, the only mouse strain which consistently fails to demonstrate specific suppression of the autoantibody response is the SJL, which lacks the I-E molecules suggested to be important in the generation of suppressor T cells. The results presented here show that some, but not all, I-E negative strains of mice are capable of exhibiting transferable suppression of RRBC-induced antibodies.