Liver tissue graft rejection in murine major histocompatibility complex mutants.

Liver tissue grafts between seven H-2 mutants and their parental strains have been studied. Each of these mutants was originally identified by reciprocal mutant--parental strain skin graft rejection. However, liver grafts among mutants and parental standard strains are not uniformly rejected. Liver graft rejection also fails to correlate with mutant--parental stimulation on CML and MLC. In addition, the immune reaction pattern of female mutant animals against grafts of male liver differs from the reaction pattern found in parental standard strains. Several explanations for the differences between immune response to liver and skin grafts are proposed, including different T cell subsets involved in recognition, availability of antigenic sites to immunocompetent cells, and structural differences between mutant and parental H-2 antigens.