Erythrocyte alloantigens in the Storrs strain of hereditary muscular dystrophic chickens and segregating testcross progeny.

The Storrs strain of muscular dystrophic chickens were typed for erythrocyte alloalleles at 10 loci, including the B locus. Gene fixation is present at five loci and expression of the predominate alloantigen varied in frequency from 0.53 to 0.91 at the other five loci tested. The Storrs strain of muscular dystrophic chickens are not fixed at the B locus, expressing the B2/B2 allelic combination 81 percent of the time and B2/B23 the remaining percentage. Testcross progeny segregating for the muscular dystrophy trait did not show any alloantigen associations at the 10 loci examined. No association of the MD train with a particular B genotype could be ascertained. CPK levels as a measure of muscle destruction in the muscular dystrophic testcross progeny segregating at the B locus did not reveal an association with any B haplotype. Serum IgG levels and low Con A response in muscular dystrophic testcross progeny also were not associated with any specific B locus alloantigen combinations. The possibility remains that the establishment of a pathological index for muscular dystrophy in MD chickens may reveal an association with the B locus.