Abstract
The Ly49 family of natural killer (NK) receptors is encoded by a highly polymorphic multigene family in the mouse and is also present in multiple copies in the rat. However, this gene exists as a single copy in primates and is mutated to non-function in humans. We recently showed that the cow also likely has only one Ly49 gene, but it is unclear what the Ly49 gene content is for other mammals. We have now isolated Ly49 cDNAs from the domestic cat, dog and pig and show that the corresponding gene appears to be single copy in these three species. The open reading frame is intact in all the genes and the putative proteins contain an immune tyrosine-based inhibition motif (ITIM), suggesting a role as an inhibitory receptor. In contrast to the other mammals, several Ly49-like genes appear to exist in the horse, indicating that amplification of this locus has occurred in a non-rodent lineage. Finally, phylogenetic analysis suggests that the rodent Ly49 genes have evolved more rapidly than their counterparts in mammals where the gene has remained as a single copy.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Kristen Harden, Karina McQueen and Corinna Baust for technical assistance, Paula Henthorn (University of Pennsylvania) for the dog samples, Kris Gillespie (Jack Bell Research Centre, Vancouver, B.C.) for providing the pig blood and Shirley Ellis (Institute for Animal Health, Compton, UK) for the horse DNA. We are also grateful to Kibble McCutcheon (Vancouver) and Terri Schiller (Animal Critical Care Group, Vancouver) for donating the cat spleen sample, Fumio Takei (B.C. Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver) for helpful comments and Christine Kelly for assistance with manuscript preparation. This work was supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to D.M. with core support provided by the British Columbia Cancer Agency. B.T.W. is supported by a studentship from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. This paper is dedicated to Kibble McCutcheon.
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Nucleotide sequence data are available in GenBank under accession numbers AY191817–19
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Gagnier, L., Wilhelm, B.T. & Mager, D.L. Ly49 genes in non-rodent mammals. Immunogenetics 55, 109–115 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00251-003-0558-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00251-003-0558-9