Abstract
Abstract While the molecular mechanisms of coral immune responses are unclear, the Acropora genome reveals complex gene networks associated with innate immunity, apoptosis, and autophagy. We are interested in whether mobile genetic elements help drive the evolution of disease resistance gene clusters in corals. The purpose of this project is to mine the coral genome for pathogen recognition and disease resistance loci in the leucine-rich repeat (LRR) and immunoglobulin (Ig) families to map and analyze regions with an increased density of these genes. Pfam searches in the A. digitifera genome for Ig and LRR loci were performed. Ig- or LRR-containing regions were clustered based on genome location/scaffold position, and the resulting genome sequence region was extracted. The identities of the translated protein sequences within the extracted regions were determined using BLAST. LRR or Ig designations were annotated onto their corresponding open reading frame sequences. CENSOR was used to detect and annotate mobile element sequences within each cluster. We built phylogenetic trees to analyze relationships of the LRR and Ig loci within and between these clusters to determine whether similar mobile element sequences were associated with the amplification and dissemination of disease resistance loci. We found related resistance gene sequences associated with similar mobile element sequences both within and across resistance gene clusters.
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