Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard?

ABSTRACT: Cadherins are homophilic cell surface adhesion proteins, some of which mediate interactions between maternal and foetal tissues during mammalian pregnancy. David Haig suggested that these proteins may exhibit 'green-beard gene' effects, whereby the nature of binding between identical alleles in mother and foetus leads to differential levels of resource transfer. The selfish effects of such self-recognizing alleles should, however, be suppressed over evolutionary time by unlinked genes, which is expected to lead to antagonistic coevolution between placentally expressed cadherins and unlinked modifiers. Such molecular coevolution should leave a signature of positive selection, with high ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous amino acid substitution. We present evidence that three placentally

SUBMITTER: Summers K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1564080 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature