US-AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIES JOINT WORKSHOP

US-AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIES JOINT WORKSHOP ON VERTEBRATE COMPARATIVE GENOMICS
Beckman Conference Centre, Irvine, California, 23-25 May 2007

MHC genes of opossums, wallabies, koalas, devils and platypuses
by Katherine Belov

Dr Kathy Belov received her PhD in marsupial genetics from Macquarie University in 2002. She has continued to focus on the evolution and function of the marsupial and monotreme immune systems with an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Australian Museum, followed by a University of Sydney Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Faculty of Veterinary Science. She recently accepted a lectureship position in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney. Her interests include genome evolution, immunogenetics and conservation biology. She currently supervises 6 PhD students and one Honours student and enjoys extremely fruitful collaborations with the ANU, WEHI, University of New Mexico, Sanger Centre, Cambridge University and the sequencing teams at Broad and WashU.

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is the most important region of the vertebrate genome with respect to the body’s response against infectious disease and parasites. The MHC is involved in autoimmunity and transplantation acceptance/rejection and is believed to affect reproduction by mediating mate choice. Sequencing of the opossum, tammar wallaby and platypus genome projects is allowing us to trace the evolutionary history of this key genomic region. We have shown that the MHC of the opossum is similar in size and gene content to the MHC of eutherian mammals, but its organisation is more similar to that of non-mammals. The wallaby MHC is unusual in that Class I genes are not linked to the Class II and Class III regions, but are scattered across different chromosomes. Gene sequences from these model organisms have paved the way for disease and population studies. I will discuss work that is currently being conducted in my lab on MHC diversity in koalas and platypuses and will specifically focus on MHC diversity and expression in Tasmanian devils, a species of marsupial carnivore that currently faces extinction due to a fatal clonal tumor epidemic.

Contact details:
The University of Sydney
Faculty of Veterinary Science
RMC Gunn B19
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia

Ph: 61 2 9351 3454
Fax: 61 2 9351 3957
Email: kbelov@vetsci.usyd.edu.au