| Research Abstract |
The self-nonself discrimination system of vertebrates was built over evolutionary time. Therefore, to understand the biological significance of the system, it is insufficient to study only humans and mice. The aim of this project was, therefore, to study the structure and function of the self-nonself discrimination system in a wide variety of animals ranging from mammals.to fish. The head investigator discovered that the genome of mammals such as humans and mice contains the regions paralogous to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). These regions and the MHC region appear to have diverged as a result of genome duplication that took place early in vertebrate evolution, most likely in a common ancestor of jawed vertebrates. Dr. Flajnik continued his work on the genomic organization of the Xenopus MHC. He also studied the molecular mechanisms by which the shark Ig-like NAR gene diversifies. Dr. Du Pasquier identified a large number of human genes belonging to the CTX gene family. Dr. Kaufman determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the chicken MHC and found that, unlike the situation in mammals, the chicken MHC does not contain the LMP genes, but that it contains C-type lectin-like NK receptor genes.
|
