title: Marsupial cytokines. Structure, function and evolution.
abstract: The cytokines are an important group of molecules involved in coordinating the many and varied components of the immune system. These molecules have been extensively studied in model eutherian mammals such as mice but comparatively little is known about the cytokine network of marsupials. Such information will be invaluable in elucidating fundamental aspects of the marsupial immune system and will also highlight parallels and differences between the immune systems of marsupials and eutherians. Given the importance of these goals, our groups have recently begun to tackle this lack of knowledge of the marsupial cytokine system and have met with considerable success in the face of the rapid rate of change of these proteins. This has led to the isolation of the full-length sequences encoding marsupial orthologues of tumour necrosis factor (TNF), lymphotoxins alpha and beta (LT-alpha and beta), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1beta), and interleukin-10 (IL-10). Here we review what has been learnt about structural, functional and evolutionary aspects of these marsupial cytokines as well as briefly describing more recent work in progress and future directions in this field.
authors.affiliation: University of Western Sydney, Nepean, School of Science, P.O. Box 10, Kingswood, Australia. ga.harrison@uws.edu.au
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Harrison
authors.forename: D N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Wedlock
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D016207:Cytokines / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D007372:Interferons / Q000737:chemistry; D007375:Interleukin-1 / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D016753:Interleukin-10 / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D008233:Lymphotoxin-alpha / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D008394:Marsupialia / Q000276:immunology*; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D014409:Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D016207:Cytokines; D007375:Interleukin-1; D008233:Lymphotoxin-alpha; D014409:Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha; D016753:Interleukin-10; D007372:Interferons