title: What chickens would tell you about the evolution of antigen processing and presentation.
abstract: Outside of mammals, antigen processing and presentation have only been investigated in chickens. The chicken MHC is organized differently than mammals, allowing the co-evolution of polymorphic genes, with each MHC haplotype having a set of TAP1, TAP2 and tapasin alleles directed to high expression of a single classical class I molecule. However, the class I alleles vary in the size of peptide-binding repertoire, along with a suite of other properties. The salient features of the chicken MHC are found in many non-mammalian vertebrates, and are likely to have been set at the origin of the adaptive immune system of jawed vertebrates, with unrelated genes co-evolving to set up the original pathways. Half a billion years later, various features of presentation and resistance to disease still reflect this ancestral arrangement.
authors.affiliation: University of Cambridge, Department of Pathology, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QP, United Kingdom; Department of Veterinary Medicine, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB2 0ES, United Kingdom. Electronic address: jfk31@cam.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kaufman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017951:Antigen Presentation; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002645:Chickens / Q000276:immunology*; D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D014714:Vertebrates / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I