Cooper-Willis, A. and Hoffmann, G.W. "Symmetry of Effector Function in the Immune System Network", Mol. Immunol., 20, (8), 865-870 (1983).

 

Symmetry in stimulation was well established at a time when symmetry in killing, while plausible, had not been demonstrated experimentally. This paper describes an experiment in which two mutually monoclonal antibodies were used to demonstrate symmetric killing. The paper also demonstrates multispecificity, since one of the antibodies (the "idotype") kills not only cells with the complementary antibody ("antiidiotype") attached, but also target cells that have a structurally unrelated hapten attached to them.