MHC GENES IN AUTOIMMUNITY

In the last year progress has been made towards elucidating the roles of the MHC gene products in autoimmunity. A major advance has been the recent determination of the crystallographic structure of the human M HC class II molecule, which will be invaluable in delineating the mini mum structural requirements for peptides that induce autoimmune diseas e. In addition, the use of animal models and transgenic mouse technolo gy is continuing to increase our understanding of the involvement of t he MHC gene products in immunopathogenesis.