A family tree of vertebrate chemokine receptors for a unified nomenclature

• Published in: Developmental and comparative immunology Vol. 35; no. 7; pp. 705 - 715
• Main Authors: Nomiyama, Hisayuki, Osada, Naoki, Yoshie, Osamu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2011
• Subjects: Animals; Base Sequence; Biological Evolution; Cell Movement - genetics; Chemokine receptors; chemokines; death; Evolution; Gene cluster; Gene duplication; genes; Humans; mice; Molecular Sequence Data; Phylogeny; Receptors, Chemokine - classification; Receptors, Chemokine - genetics; Structural Homology, Protein; Terminology as Topic; Vertebrates; Gene cluster; Vertebrates; Evolution; Gene duplication; Chemokine receptors
• ISSN: 0145-305X; 1879-0089; 1879-0089
• DOI: 10.1016/j.dci.2011.01.019

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.