Figure 4.

Character displacement in immunoglobulin reactivities. We used binding patterns in a quantitative Western blot (11) as a representative character for the populations of B lymphocytes we studied. We used affinity chromatography to purify immunoglobulins secreted by normal cells that had been in competition with transgenic cells for 2 months (dotted lines, average in bold). As a control, serum from normal B6 mice was subjected to the same procedures (solid lines average in bold). Purified supernatant from an SP6 hybridoma was used to reveal the proteins that SP6 cells bind well leading to intense competition (dashed line). Serum reactivities to two tissues were obtained; murine muscle (A) and murine liver (B). A threshold to define a peak was set at O.D. = 0.1. Theory predicts that solid lines and dotted lines will coexist in areas where no dashed peak is present (as in area 1) but will not if a dashed peak is present (as in areas 2, 3, 4, and 6 but not area 5). (P = 0.11).