Genetics of antibody responsiveness to bovine serum albumin and rabbit gamma-globulin. I. Genetic analysis of high and low responder lines of mice produced by selective breeding.

The selective breeding for antibody production against bovine serum albumin (BSA) and rabbit gamma-globulin (RGG) induced a large modification in responsiveness in the high (Hv) and low (Lv) responder lines at selection limit. The total response to selection (RT) was 9.0 log2 for BSA and 8.4 log2 for RGG. This gives an interline difference of 500-fold and 337-fold respectively in terms of passive agglutinin titres. For BSA responsiveness, there is, in F1 interline hybrids, an incomplete dominance effect of the low character (-0.41) and a marked maternal effect. Complete dominance effect of high character (1.08) without any maternal effect is observed for responses to RGG. The phenotypical variability of BSA responses in F2 segregants is due 60% to genetic factors and 40% to environmental effects. Such a distribution cannot be achieved for RGG responsiveness. Both responses to BSA and RGG are controlled by the additive effect of several independent loci (polygenic regulation). One of these genes is linked with the H-2 locus. The H-2 linked gene accounts for 29% of the total interline difference for response to BSA and only 11% for response to RGG. Experiments carried out to measure the reciprocal nonspecific effect of BSA and RGG responses failed to give clear-cut results. This important phenomenon will be the subject of the companion article.