The H-mshi antigen is conserved among standard BALB/cBy, C57BL/6J, and wild-derived CAST Ei and SPRET Ei inbred strains of mice

The recessive male sterility and histoincompatibility mutation (mshi) arose spontaneously in the standard inbred mouse strain BALB/cBy. In addition to generating sterility in homozygous males, mshi controls the loss of a mino r histocompatibility antigen designated H-mshi. To determine whether the H- mshi antigen normally expressed by the BALB/cBy strain (H-mshi(c)) is the s ame as or different from the antigen (H-mshi(x)) expressed by the standard inbred C57BL/6J strain or the wild-derived CAST/Ei and SPRET/Ei strains, an imals heterozygous for the mutant antigen-loss allele (H-mshi(-)) and H-msh i(x) were grafted with tail skin from BALB/cBy mice. The long-term retentio n of grafts by these hosts indicates that the H-mshi antigen encoded by the BALB/cBy, C57BL/6J, CAST/Ei, and SPRET/Ei strains is histogenically identi cal. Conservation of this minor histocompatibility antigen among these evol utionarily diverse strains suggests that H-mshi encodes a functionally impo rtant cellular product(s).