The MHC express : evolution of an immune-related gene family across the primates
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The adaptive immune system is highly specific to particular pathogens and "remembers" all past pathogen encounters, allowing an organism to fight those pathogens faster in the future. Central to this system is the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), a large genomic locus whose "classical" gene products help T-cells distinguish which cells are normal and which are infected. With this key role in self-versus-non-self recognition, it is no surprise that the MHC is repeatedly identified in genome-wide association studies and is critical to matching donors for organ transplantation. The MHC genes constitute a large related family of genes with diverse functions; although they arise from a common ancestor, rapid evolution has made orthologous and paralogous relationships difficult to distinguish. In addition, individual genes have extreme allelic diversity and alleles are often shared between species (known as trans-species polymorphism), pointing to long-term balancing selection. These peculiarities make the MHC a fascinating yet difficult region to study from an evolutionary perspective. While many past researchers have investigated the evolution of the MHC region in the primates, the results are often outdated and scattered across hundreds of papers. In this dissertation, I revisit MHC evolution systematically with more data and modern methods, unifying and expanding upon the large existing body of work. Notably, I find new relationships between poorly-understood genes and pseudogenes across the region, long-term maintenance of alleles for over 31 million years in MHC-DQA1 and -DQB1, and rapid evolution in the peptide-binding regions of classical genes.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Fortier, Alyssa Lyn |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Pritchard, Jonathan |
| Thesis advisor | Pritchard, Jonathan |
| Thesis advisor | Kirkegaard, Karla |
| Thesis advisor | Petrov, Dmitri |
| Thesis advisor | Rosenberg, Noah |
| Degree committee member | Kirkegaard, Karla |
| Degree committee member | Petrov, Dmitri |
| Degree committee member | Rosenberg, Noah |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alyssa Lyn Fortier. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/fd214bv8863 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Alyssa Lyn Fortier
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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