Egernia stokesii (gidgee skink) MHC I positively selected sites lack concordance with HLA peptide binding regions
2017
Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) play an important role in vertebrate disease resistance,
kin recognitionand
mate choice. Mammalian MHC is the most widely characterised of all vertebrates, and attention is often given to the peptide binding regions of the MHC because they are presumed to be under stronger selection than non-peptide binding regions. For vertebrates where the MHC is less well understood, researchers commonly use the amino acid positions of the peptide binding regions of the
human leukocyte antigen(HLA) to infer the peptide binding regions within the MHC sequences of their taxon of interest. However, positively selected sites within MHC have been reported to lack correspondence with the HLA in fish, frogs, birds and reptiles including squamates. Despite squamate diversity, the MHC has been characterised in few snakes and
lizards. The
Egerniagroup of scincid
lizardsis appropriate for investigating mechanisms generating MHC variation, as their inclusion will add a new lineage (i.e. Scincidae) to studies of selection on the MHC. We aimed to identify positively selected sites within the MHC of
Egernia stokesiiand then determine if these sites corresponded with the peptide binding regions of the HLA. Six positively selected sites were identified within E. stokesii MHC I, only two were homologous with the
HLA.
E. stokesii positively selected sites corresponded more closely to non-
lizardthan other
lizardtaxa. The characterisation of the MHC of more intermediate taxa within the squamate order is necessary to understand the evolution of the MHC across all vertebrates.
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