Skip to main content
. 2019 Sep 27;39(10):599–608. doi: 10.1089/jir.2019.0043

FIG. 4.

FIG. 4.

Elimination or modulation of IFN-λ4 activity by several evolutionary mechanisms. The whole region encoding IFN-λ4 protein is absent in the mouse and rat genomes. In great apes, the IFNL4-like sequence upstream of IFNL2 produces only a 49 aa protein fragment due to an invariable stop codon (Fig. 2). A derived human-specific allele rs368234815-TT eliminates the open reading frame for IFN-λ4 in ∼50% of the world population by introducing a stop codon resulting in the production of aberrant non-IFN-λ4 protein fragments of 51, 75, 123, 124, or 143 aa, depending on the alternative exons used. Additional protein-coding variants emerged on the background of the IFN-λ4-producing haplotype with dG allele. The effects of P70S and K154E variants have been related to the decrease of IFN-λ4 activity or/and secretion, whereas functional effects of Y17C and R60P remain to be explored. Color images are available online.