Specificity of rat xenogeneic cell-mediated cytolysis for the products of the K and D loci of the mouse H-2 complex.

Lewis rat lymph node (LN) cells, when cultured with irradiated mouse spleen cells, develop cytotoxic effectors that were shown to be specific for the sensitizing mouse strain. Alloantisera directed to the products of the K and D loci of the target inhibited cytolysis whereas an antiserum to the I region gene products did not inhibit cytolysis even though LPS-induced spleen blasts were used as targets. Thus, it appears that even when effector cells from another species are generated to mouse spleen cells, the gene products of the K and D loci continue to play a predominant role.