Initially established in the Lister Institute, it transferred to the Galton Laboratory (the Genetics department) of University College, London in 1975, the original home of its predecessor.
[1] The unit mainly used serological techniques to discover blood group antigens.
Only in the last 15 years of its existence were monoclonal antibodies and molecular approaches adopted.
These are listed roughly in chronological order of the start of the research.
Research on most topics was on-going with significant publications spanning several decades: for instance Xg was discovered in the early 1960s,[2] but the unit contributed to the identification of the underlying gene, PBDX, in 1994.