title: A family tree of vertebrate chemokine receptors for a unified nomenclature.
abstract: Chemokines receptors are involved in the recruitment of various cell types in inflammatory and physiological conditions. There are 23 known chemokine receptor genes in the human genome. However, it is still unclear how many chemokine receptors exist in the genomes of various vertebrate species other than human and mouse. Moreover, the orthologous relationships are often obscure between the genes of higher and lower vertebrates. In order to provide a basis for a unified nomenclature system of the vertebrate chemokine receptor gene family, we have analysed the chemokine receptor genes from the genomes of 16 vertebrate species, and classify them into 29 orthologous groups using phylogenetic and comparative genomic analyses. The results reveal a continuous gene birth and death process during the vertebrate evolution and an interesting evolutionary history of the chemokine receptor genes after the emergence in agnathans.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Enzymology, Kumamoto University Faculty of Life Sciences, Honjo, Kumamoto 860-8556, Japan. nomiyama@gpo.kumamoto-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hisayuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nomiyama
authors.forename: Naoki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Osada
authors.forename: Osamu
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Yoshie
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002465:Cell Movement / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D019707:Receptors, Chemokine / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D040681:Structural Homology, Protein; D009626:Terminology as Topic
chemical_list: D019707:Receptors, Chemokine