Codominant inheritance in immunogenetic (IR-gene) systems

Abstract

Immunogenetic (IR-gene) systems consist of animals showing different quantitative antibody responses when immunized with similar doses of a given antigen. Strains of animals giving high and low antibody titres are described as high and low responders, respectively. The degree of dominance in F1 hybrid strains, obtained from a cross between high and low responder parents, can readily be calculated using the dominance index formula, which takes the value of +1 for complete dominance, -1 for complete recessivity and the value of zero for no dominance. In reviewing 1527 F1 animals, obtained from ninety-one immunogenetic systems, the degree of diminance (d) was found to be: +0-0076 +/- 0-1053 (mean +/- s.e.), which is close to a value of zero and this is consistent with codominant inheritance. It is suggested that in immunogenetic systems, both alleles are expressed as codominant genes.