Plethora of New Marsupial Genomes Informs Our Knowledge of Marsupial MHC Class II.

ABSTRACT: The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) plays a vital role in the vertebrate immune system due to its role in infection, disease and autoimmunity, or recognition of "self". The marsupial MHC class II genes show divergence from eutherian MHC class II genes and are a unique taxon of therian mammals that give birth to altricial and immunologically naive young providing an opportune study system for investigating evolution of the immune system. Additionally, the MHC in marsupials has been implicated in disease associations, including susceptibility to Chlamydia pecorum infection in koalas. Due to the complexity of the gene family, automated annotation is not possible so here we manually annotate 384 class II MHC genes in 29 marsupial species. We find losses of key components of the marsupia

SUBMITTER: Silver LW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11305139 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature