Male Skin Isograft Survival in Pregnant and Multiparous Female Mice.

Abstract

Breyere and Barrett have demonstrated that multiparous female mice of the BALB cAn strain which had borne litters of strain DBA/2 males became tolerant of a transplanted sarcoma originated in DBA/2 strain mice ( 1 ) . Recently Prehn ( 2 ) demonstrated that female mice of the C57Bl/An strain parous by repeated matings to littermate males accepted male skin isografts in high proportion of cases. Furthermore, the incidence of tolerance of male graft was proportional to the number of litters borne by the female recipient. Thus, while 60% of the females having 1-3 litters were tolerant of male skin isografts, 90% of those having 4-6 litters were also tolerant and accepted male skin isograf ts.In the experiments reported herein studies were undertaken to determine male skin isograft survival in multiparous female mice of the C57B1 (Subline l ) o strain. Female mice of this strain regularly reject skin grafts taken from isologous males although the antigenic disparity between donor and recipient is rather weak allowing induction of tol-