STUDY OF THE COUNTERPARTS OF HUMAN RHESUS ANTIGENS IN NONHUMAN-PRIMATES

Human alloantibodies specific of some Rh antigens cross-react with non human primates red blood cells. These crossreactions demonstrated tha t only African apes express equivalents of Rh(o) (D) and hr' (c). The antigenic resemblance between these two human antigens and their prima te homologues is confirmed by the reactivities of human anti-D and ant i-c monoclonal antibodies. The use of a human Rh cDNA probe allowed to confirm by Southern blot hybridization that nonhuman primates possess Rh-like genes. The number of Rh-like genes per haploid genome was ded uced from the results obtained with exon-specific probes.