Anthrax Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anthrax, including details on bacillus anthracis, contagiousness, exposure, effects.

Diversity and function of adaptive immune receptors in a jawless vertebrate.

Alder MN, Rogozin IB, Iyer LM, Glazko GV, Cooper MD, Pancer Z

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA.

Instead of the immunoglobulin-type antigen receptors of jawed vertebrates, jawless fish have variable lymphocyte receptors (VLRs), which consist of leucine-rich repeat (LRR) modules. Somatic diversification of the VLR gene is shown here to occur through a multistep assembly of LRR modules randomly selected from a large bank of flanking cassettes. The predicted concave surface of the VLR is lined with hypervariable positively selected residues, and computational analysis suggests a repertoire of about 10(14) unique receptors. Lamprey immunized with anthrax spores responded with the production of soluble antigen-specific VLRs. These findings reveal that two strikingly different modes of antigen recognition through rearranged lymphocyte receptors have evolved in the jawless and jawed vertebrates.

Published 23 December 2005 in Science, 310(5756): 1970-3.
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