characterization of the major histocompatibility complex class ii genes in miiuy croaker表征的主要组织相容性复合体ii级基因miiuy嘎声.pdfVIP

Characterization of the Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II Genes in Miiuy Croaker Tianjun Xu*, Yuena Sun, Ge Shi, Yuanzhi Cheng, Rixin Wang* Laboratory for Marine Living Resources and Molecular Engineering, College of Marine Science, Zhejiang Ocean University, Zhoushan, People’s Republic of China Abstract Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) has a central role in the adaptive immune system by presenting foreign peptide to the T-cell receptor. In order to study the molecular function and genomic characteristic of class II genes in teleost, the full lengths of MHC class IIA and IIB cDNA and genomic sequence were cloned from miiuy croaker (Miichthys miiuy). As in other teleost, four exons and three introns were identified in miiuy croaker class IIA gene; but the difference is that six exons and five introns were identified in the miiuy croaker class IIB gene. The deduced amino acid sequence of class IIA and class IIB had 26.3–85.7% and 11.0–88.8% identity with those of mammal and teleost, respectively. Real-time quantitative RT-PCR demonstrated that the MHC class IIA and IIB were ubiquitously expressed in ten normal tissues; expression levels of MHC genes were found first upregulated and then downregulated, and finally by a recovery to normal level throughout the pathogenic bacteria infection process. In addition, we report on the underlying mechanism that maintains sequences diversity among many fish species. A series of site-model tests implemented in the CODEML program revealed that positive Darwinian selection is likely the cause of the molecular evolution in the fish MHC class II genes. Citation: Xu T, Sun Y, Shi G, Cheng Y, Wang R (2011) Characterization of the Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II Genes in Miiuy Croaker. PLoS ONE 6(8): e23823. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023823 Editor: Zhanjiang Liu, Auburn University, U