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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1995 May 9;92(10):4259–4263. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.10.4259

Low major histocompatibility complex class II diversity in European and North American moose.

S Mikko 1, L Andersson 1
PMCID: PMC41923  PMID: 7753793

Abstract

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes encode cell surface proteins whose function is to bind and present intracellularly processed peptides to T lymphocytes of the immune system. Extensive MHC diversity has been documented in many species and is maintained by some form of balancing selection. We report here that both European and North American populations of moose (Alces alces) exhibit very low levels of genetic diversity at an expressed MHC class II DRB locus. The observed polymorphism was restricted to six amino acid substitutions, all in the peptide binding site, and four of these were shared between continents. The data imply that the moose have lost MHC diversity in a population bottleneck, prior to the divergence of the Old and New World subspecies. Sequence analysis of mtDNA showed that the two subspecies diverged at least 100,000 years ago. Thus, viable moose populations with very restricted MHC diversity have been maintained for a long period of time. Both positive selection for polymorphism and intraexonic recombination have contributed to the generation of MHC diversity after the putative bottleneck.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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