Ploidy, pigment patterns and species specific antigenicity in interspecific nuclear transplantations in newts
It was shown by Simnett (1964) that in Xenopus laevis skin grafts in adult frogs between members of the same nuclear clone were tolerated in the same way as autografts, but in skin grafts made between individuals belonging to different nuclear clones a homograft rejection occurred. The nucleus is therefore responsible for the synthesis of specific transplantation antigens. It seemed to us useful to investigate the species-specific antigenicity of animals derived from eggs transplanted with foreign nuclei in correlation with their ploidy and with the development of their species-specific pigment patterns, as a proof of functional activity of transplanted nuclei. For this purpose we used two species of Triturus, T. vulgaris and T. alpestris, because of earlier studies carried out in our laboratory on the pigmentation of their hybrids (Romanovský & Ŝtefanová, 960; Mazáková-Štefanová, 1965) and on their species-specific antigenicity (Romanovský, 1962 a, b), in spite of the known difficulties and limitations of nuclear transplantation experiments in these species (Lehman, 1955; Sládeček & Mazáková-Štefanová, 1964, 1965).