Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Genes: Evolution

Austin L Hughes, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA

Published online: May 2008

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005133.pub2

The major histocompatibility complex is a family of genes whose products play a key role in the immune system, presenting peptides to T cells. This family includes the most polymorphic loci known in animals.

Keywords: human leukocyte antigen; immune system genes; major histocompatibility complex; multigene families; polymorphism

Figure 1. Map of the human class II (a) and class I (b) regions of the major histocompatibility complex, showing expressed class I and class II genes only. Distances are in kilobases. Dark boxes are highly polymorphic loci.
Figure 2. Schematic drawings of class I and class II molecules of the major histocompatibility complex. PBR: peptide-binding region; 2m: 2-microglobulin.
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 References
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    Brown JH, Jardetsky T, Saper MA et al. (1993) Three-dimensional structure of the human class II histocompatibility antigen HLA-DR1. Nature 364: 33–39.
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 Further Reading
    Bontrop RE (2006) Comparative genetics of MHC polymorphisms in different primate species: duplications and deletions. Human Immunology 67: 388–397.
    Flajnik MF, Ohta Y, Namikawa-Yamada C and Nonaka M (1999) Insight into the primordial MHC from studies in ectothermic vertebrates. Immunological Reviews 167: 59–67.
    book Hughes AL (1999) Adaptive Evolution of Genes and Genomes. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    Hughes AL, Hughes MK, Howell CY and Nei M (1994) Natural selection at the class II major histocompatibility complex loci of mammals. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 345: 359–367.
    Hughes AL and Nei M (1990) Evolutionary relationships of class II MHC genes in mammals. Molecular Biology and Evolution 7: 491–514.
    Hughes AL and Yeager M (1998) Natural selection at the major histocompatibility complex loci of vertebrates. Annual Review of Genetics 32: 415–435.
    Hughes AL, Yeager M, Ten Elshof A and Chorney MJ (1999) A new taxonomy of mammalian MHC class I molecules. Immunology Today 20: 22–26.
    Kelley J, Walter L and Trowsdale J (2005) Comparative genomics of major histocompatibility complexes. Immunogenetics 56: 683–695.
    book Klein J (1986) Natural History of the Major Histocompatibility Complex. New York, NY: Wiley.
    McDevitt HO (2000) Discovering the role of the major histocompatibility complex in the immune response. Annual Review of Immunology 18: 1–17.
    Meyer D, Single RM, Mack SJ, Erlich HA and Thomson G (2006) Signatures of demographic history and natural selection in the human major histocompatibility complex loci. Genetics 173: 2121–2142.
    Nei M, Gu X and Sitnikova T (1997) Evolution by the birth-and-death process in multigene families of the vertebrate immune system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 94: 7799–7806.
    Parham P and Ohta T (1996) Population biology of antigen presentation by MHC class I molecules. Science 272: 67–74.
    Shiina T, Ota M, Shimizu S et al. (2006) Rapid evolution of major histocompatibility complex class I genes in primates generates new disease alleles in humans via hitchhiking diversity. Genetics 173: 1555–1570.

Related Sub-Topics:

Major Histocompatibility Complex | Molecular Evolution | Protein Evolution | Evolution of Coding and Functional Modules
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Article Title: Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Genes: Evolution
 
How to Cite close
Hughes, Austin L(May 2008) Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Genes: Evolution. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005133.pub2]