Genetical Aspects of Active Defence

Abstract

I find myself in a rather uncomfortable position in presenting this paper. The reason for this is that what I have to say does not support much of the speculation and dogma that has been presented in preceding papers. I feel like a non-believer in a congregation of believers. The belief seems to be that specificity of the interactions between host and parasite, and the restriction of development of the pathogen, are controlled by compounds not produced by transcription and translation. This I find difficult to reconcile with the known genetics of interactions. What I will try to do, therefore, is to present the kinds of results obtained from studies of the inheritance of genetic variability in host-parasite interactions, then proceed to describe some models and give examples of what the genetics tells me about those models of interactions, and conclude with some examples of uses of genetic arguments in studies of host-parasite interactions.