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Jan Klein - Differing concepts of the H2 system (67/106)

29 views · Published 3 August 2017 · 3:00 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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Born in 1936, Jan Klein is a Czech-American immunologist who co-founded the modern science of immunogenetics. He is the author or co-author of over 560 publications including the book 'Where Do We Come From?' which examines the molecular evolution of humans. From 1977 to his retirement in 2004, he was the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology at Tübingen, Germany. [Listener: Colm O'hUigin; date recorded: 2005]

TRANSCRIPT: It applied to class I antigen.  There was no evidence that it would also be somehow functioning with the class II antigens but the obvious possibility was there that somehow the class II antigens also are, in fact, participants in some form of dual recognition against the different kind of antigens. The response against the viruses was via the cytotoxicity and they were killing the lymphocytes or the active cells were killing the target cells infected by the virus. In the case of the class II associated... or the IR1 associated immune responses, the response was antibody response, which is of a different kind.  And this concept of two kinds of responses has in the meantime emerged in the... in immunology, so there was one going through... one response going through killing of target cells by cells, by activated immune cells, and the other going through the humeral response, that is the antibodies in a serum primarily, with the help of complement and the help of many other factors. So because of this dichotomy of the immune response, one could argue the response against the viruses... viral antigens, is channelled through the class I antigens serving as dual element... second element in the dual recognition of the immune response, and that somehow, it was still not clear how, but somehow the humoral arm of immunity, the response mediated through antibodies was generated by recognition of some other type of antigens than the viral antigens in association with the class II antigens... the class II molecules on the cells, and that was what I favoured... this interpretation.

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