George Davis Snell, American Geneticist

George Davis Snell (December 19, 1903 - June 6, 1996) was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist. He did graduate work at Harvard University with William E. Castle, the first American biologist to look for Mendelian inheritance in mammals. Snell earned his PhD from Harvard in 1930. His doctoral thesis was on genetic linkage in mice. In 1935 Snell joined the staff of The Jackson Laboratory in Maine and he remained there for the entire balance of his long career. He shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Baruj Benacerraf and Jean Dausset for their discoveries concerning genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions'. Snell specifically discovered the genetic factors that determine the possibilities of transplanting tissue from one individual to another. He introduced the concept of H antigens and his work led to the discovery of HLA, the major histocompatibility complex, in humans (and all vertebrates) that is analogous to the H-2 complex in mice. Recognition of these key genes was prerequisite to successful tissue and organ transplantation. He died in 1996 at the age of 92

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Antigens Dausset Geneticist Genetics Immunologist Immunology Laureate Nobelist Organ Recipient Snell Tissue Tissues Transplant Transplantation Transplanting

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