Polymorphic sites preferentially avoid co-evolving residues in MHC class I proteins.

ABSTRACT: Major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) molecules are critical to adaptive immune defence mechanisms in vertebrate species and are encoded by highly polymorphic genes. Polymorphic sites are located close to the ligand-binding groove and entail MHC-I alleles with distinct binding specificities. Some efforts have been made to investigate the relationship between polymorphism and protein stability. However, less is known about the relationship between polymorphism and MHC-I co-evolutionary constraints. Using Direct Coupling Analysis (DCA) we found that co-evolution analysis accurately pinpoints structural contacts, although the protein family is restricted to vertebrates and comprises less than five hundred species, and that the co-evolutionary signal is mainly driven by inter-specie

SUBMITTER: Dib L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5983860 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature