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What chickens would tell you about the evolution of antigen processing and presentation.


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Authors

Abstract

Outside of mammals, antigen processing and presentation have only been investigated in chickens. The chicken MHC is organized differently than mammals, allowing the co-evolution of polymorphic genes, with each MHC haplotype having a set of TAP1, TAP2 and tapasin alleles directed to high expression of a single classical class I molecule. However, the class I alleles vary in the size of peptide-binding repertoire, along with a suite of other properties. The salient features of the chicken MHC are found in many non-mammalian vertebrates, and are likely to have been set at the origin of the adaptive immune system of jawed vertebrates, with unrelated genes co-evolving to set up the original pathways. Half a billion years later, various features of presentation and resistance to disease still reflect this ancestral arrangement.

Description

Keywords

Animals, Antigen Presentation, Biological Evolution, Chickens, Histocompatibility Antigens Class I, Humans, Vertebrates

Journal Title

Curr Opin Immunol

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0952-7915
1879-0372

Volume Title

34

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (089305/Z/09/Z)
I thank Hannah Siddle and Andy van Hateren for critical reading of the manuscript, and the Wellcome Trust programme grant 089305 for support.