Cytotoxicity of lens antisera to dissociated chick neural retina cells in tissue culture.

Immunoprecipitation techniques have shown that characteristic Jens proteins can be found in many tissues of the chick eye. Langman & Prescott (1959), Maisel & Langman (1961o), Maisel (1962) and Maisel & Harmison (1963), among others, have demonstrated antigens cross-reacting with adult chick lens antisera in iris, pigmented retina, cornea and aqueous and vitreous humour. Maisel (1963) suggested that lens antigens are present in neural retina, but the presence of lens antigens in this tissue has not been firmly established, and a number of investigators reporting lens antigens in other ocular tissues have not found them in the neuro-retina. [For reviews of immunological investigations on the development and ubiquity of lens proteins see Langman (1959a, b), Maisel & Langman (1961/)), Rabaey (1962), Woedereman (1961), Zwaan (1963), Ikeda & Zwaan (1966, 1967), Zwaan & Ikeda (1968) and Clayton, Campbell & Truman (1968).] Chick embryos developing in the presence of lens specific antiserum do, however, exhibit defects of the neural retina. Burke, Sullivan, Petersen & Weed (1944), Langman (1960), Fowler & Clarke (1960), Langman & Maisel (1962) and Langman, Maisel & Squires (1962) found that embryos developing in the presence of antisera against lens crystallins evidence defects not only of the lens, but of the optic cup and often of the brain as well. Langman et al. (1962) found that when 01 ml of lens antiserum was dropped on chick embryos in ovo at 24 or 32 h of incubation 'the lens was less frequently affected than the nervous retina'. Clarke & Fowler (1960) explanted optic vesicles of 4-7 somite embryos to medium containing lens antiserum, after removing the overlying ectoderm (presumptive lens). The tissues were removed from the treatment medium and wrapped in untreated ectoderm competent to form lens. These sandwiches were allowed to develop, and sectioned. Whereas 50 % of the