Histotope

Thus, a mutation affecting the structure of a class II molecule changes the co-recognition specificity of a histotope on the APC of the mutant.

However, this experiment by itself did not distinguish whether the change was in the desetope, which is the most straightforward interpretation, or in the histotope.

First, during ontogeny, T cells are positively selected by recognition of the histotope and then negatively selected by a tolerance mechanism or vice versa.