Heredity of the blood groups / by Alexander S. Wiener and Irving B. Wexler.

  • Wiener, Alexander S. (Alexander Solomon), 1907-1976.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Heredity of the blood groups / by Alexander S. Wiener and Irving B. Wexler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    12 HEREDITY OF THE BLOOD GROUPS agglutinogens A and В can be identified by the corresponding serums anti-A and anti-B, respectively. The complex agglutinogens of the Rh-Hr systems on the other hand, can be identified only by the use of a battery of antiserums. Table 1 summarizes the history and present status of the human blood groups. Principles of Blood Group Genetics A-B-O Groups. The hereditary nature of the blood groups was recognized shortly after Landsteiner's discovery. The first family studies were done by Epstein and Ottenberg^ in 1908, while in 1910 von Düngern and Hirszfeld suggested that the four A-B-0 groups are inherited by means of two independent pairs of allelic genes, Aa and Bb. In 1924, Felix Bernstein,a mathematician, showed that this theory is incorrect, since it would require that in the general population the following relationship among the frequencies of the blood groups should hold, О X AB = A X В. As has already been shown, this relationship does not hold, which not only proves that agglutinogens A and В belong to the same blood group system, but also that their heredity is not dependent on genes located in different chromosomes. Other workers suggested that the gene pairs Aa and Bb might be linked within the same chromosome pair,^® but as Bern¬ stein pointed out, such a situation would yield the same result at equilibrium as independent assortment, although equilibrium is at¬ tained more slowly in the case of linkage. According to Bernstein's theory, there are three allelic genes which have been variously designated as A, B, and 0, or /^, /^, and respectively. (The base letter I was selected because the A-B-0 blood grouping tests depend upon isoagglutination.) Accordingly, corre¬ sponding to the four blood groups there are six genotypes as follows: group O, genotype 7^/^; group A, genotypes and group B, genotypes 7®7^ and 7^7^; and group AB, genotype 7'^7®. Despite Bernstein's mathematical demonstration of inheritance of the A-B-0 blood groups by multiple allelic genes, the theory of linked genes enjoyed considerable vogue, until when no crossing over could be demonstrated this theory was abandoned. In 1927, Furuhata^'' in Japan proposed a theory of complete linkage, postulating the existence of three completely linked gene pairs ab, Ab, and аВ. Obviously, this theory is identical with the theory of multiple alleles, because all that