Functional immune diversity in reindeer reveals a high Arctic population at risk

Climate changes the geographic range of both species as well as pathogens, causing a potential increase in the vulnerability of populations or species with limited genetic diversity. With advances in high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies, we can now define functional expressed genetic divers...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Main Authors: Morten Lukacs, Ingebjørg H. Nymo, Knut Madslien, Jørn Våge, Vebjørn Veiberg, Christer Moe Rolandsen, Cathrine Arnason Bøe, Arvind Y. M. Sundaram, Unni Grimholt
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Subjects:
climate change
MHC
reindeer
immune diversity
Svalbard
Norway
Evolution
QH359-425
Ecology
QH540-549.5
Arctic
Arctic Population
Climate change
Northern Norway
svalbard reindeer
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.1058674
https://doaj.org/article/0f47a0f7304b4148bad075633183c297
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Summary:Climate changes the geographic range of both species as well as pathogens, causing a potential increase in the vulnerability of populations or species with limited genetic diversity. With advances in high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies, we can now define functional expressed genetic diversity of wild species at a larger scale and identify populations at risk. Previous studies have used genomic DNA to define major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II diversity in reindeer. Varying numbers of expressed genes found in many ungulates strongly argues for using cDNA in MHC typing strategies to ensure that diversity estimates relate to functional genes. We have used available reindeer genomes to identify candidate genes and established an HTS approach to define expressed MHC class I and class II diversity. To capture a broad diversity we included samples from wild reindeer from Southern Norway, semi-domesticated reindeer from Northern Norway and reindeer from the high Artic archipelago Svalbard. Our data show a medium MHC diversity in semi-domesticated and wild Norwegian mainland reindeer, and low MHC diversity reindeer in Svalbard reindeer. The low immune diversity in Svalbard reindeer provides a potential risk if the pathogenic pressure changes in response to altered environmental conditions due to climate change, or increased human-related activity.

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