Abstract
AUTOANTIBODIES of various types appear in the serum during autoimmune diseases; but it is not clear whether they are the cause or the result of the pathological process. Grabar1 and Boyden2 have postulated that autoantibodies are constantly present in low concentrations in the normal organism, their function being to transport normal catabolic products. This possibility that autoantibodies may have a physiological function was strengthened by the recent detection of autoantibodies in normal human sera3,4 and in sera of healthy mice5. In the work recorded here, sera of normal adult mice of the 129 inbred strain were found to be cytotoxic for thymus cells of mice of strain 129 and of other strains in the presence of guinea-pig serum. Although the nature of the factor in 129 strain mouse serum has not yet been fully established, its behaviour in the cytotoxic test is similar to that of well-defined isoantibodies6,7. It will therefore be referred to here as an antibody.
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SCHLESINGER, M. Spontaneous Occurrence of Autoantibodies Cytotoxic to Thymus Cells in the Sera of Mice of the 129 Strain. Nature 207, 429–430 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/207429b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/207429b0
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