Genetic control of immune responsiveness : relationship to disease susceptibility / edited by Hugh O. McDevitt and Maurice Landy.

Date:
1972
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Genetic control of immune responsiveness : relationship to disease susceptibility / edited by Hugh O. McDevitt and Maurice Landy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    GENETIC CONTROL OF IMMUNE RESPONSIVENESS Relationship to Disease Susceptibility In recent years, studies in many animal species, and with many antigens, have shown that spe¬ cific immune responses are under strict genetic control. In retrospect, the older immunological literature contains many examples of such con¬ trol mechanisms, and it is now established that these genetic controls operate at several discrete steps in the immune response. The class of im¬ mune response gene most thoroughly studied is that linked to the major histocompatibility gene complex. Indeed, it was the finding of this link¬ age that really launched the present era. The most striking development to emerge from these studies is that the major histocompatibility- linked immune response genes seem to control antigen recognition by thymus-derived, antigen- reactive cells, and may represent the structural genes for the T-cell receptor. The numerous and far-reaching implications of these developments for all of biology and medi¬ cine prompted the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to organize the Fifth Brook Lodge Conference around the issues in Genetic Control of Immune Responsiveness, emphasizing particularly the relationship to di¬ sease susceptibility. On May 8-10, 1972, thirty- six leading investigators in immunology, genet¬ ics, cell biology, infectious diseases, virology, and oncology met at Brook Lodge for three days of intensive discussion to organize and evaluate these concurrent developments and to project the needs and the opportunities in this emerging area joining immunology and genetics. This conference was the first occasion on which many new and exciting developments in our understanding of the histocompatibility genes and their linked genetic control of specific im¬ mune responses, expressed in T cells, have been compared and contrasted with the even more recent discovery of immunoglobulin allotype- linked specific immune response genes which are expressed as receptors on В cells. The two types of genes thus play a symmetrical role in determining the specificity of antigen recogni¬ tion by each cell type. Still other categories of immune response genes are those linked neither to histocompatibility nor to allotype genes; these immune response genes may be expressed in other cell types and could be involved in im¬ mune cell collaboration. ¡Continued on back flap/