Table 2. The 10 most highly expressed immune genes in the Tasmanian devil milk transcriptome.

	Transcript Id	Gene	Protein	Relative percentagea	Immune function
1	comp62784	LYZ	Lysozyme C	3.58	Defence again bacteria, inflammatory response. Important part of innate immunity (Nicholas et al., 1989)
2	comp129481	WAP	Whey acidic protein	1.50	Potential protease inhibitor (Nicholas et al., 1997)
3	comp62802	FTH1	Ferritin heavy subunit	0.30	Iron storage and sequestering iron (Brock, 1980; Demmer et al., 1999)
4	comp129487	FTL	Ferritin light subunit	0.21	Iron storage and sequestering iron (Brock, 1980; Demmer et al., 1999)
5	comp129504	AZGP1	Zinc-alpha-2-glycoprotein	0.08	Potential role antigen binding (Sanchez, López-Otín & Bjorkman, 1997)
6	comp129394	MHC I	Major histocompatibility complex class I	0.07	Binds to antigens and stimulation of the immune response (Chaplin, 2010)
7	comp129498	S100A9	S100 calcium binding protein A9	0.07	Important regulatory roles in inflammatory immune response. It can induce neutrophil chemotaxis and adhesion and promote phagocytosis (Ryckman et al., 2003)
8	comp62779	CLC25	Chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 25	0.06	CCL25 induces chemotaxis of thymocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells (Vicari et al., 1997)
9	comp129492	TPT1	Translationally-controlled tumour protein	0.04	TCTP is involved in microtubule stabilization, calcium-binding activities, and apoptosis (Bommer & Thiele, 2004)
10	comp127370	B2M	β-2-microglobulin	0.04	β-chain of MHC I: serum protein associated with major MHC I heavy chain (Adamski & Demmer, 1999; Gussow et al., 1987)

Notes.

^aRelative percentage: the gene expression as a percentage of the total gene expression of the entire transcriptome.