Beck Stephan
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton Genome Campus, Cambridge CB10 1SA, UK.
Novartis Found Symp. 2003;254:223-30; discussion 230-3, 250-2.
One of the major differences that set apart vertebrates from non-vertebrates is the presence of a complex immune system. Over the past 400-500 million years, many novel immune genes and gene families have emerged and their products form sophisticated pathways providing protection against most pathogens. The Human Genome Project has laid the foundation to study these genes and pathways in unprecedented detail. Members of the immunoglobulin (Ig) superfamily alone were found to make up over 2% of human genes possibly constituting the largest gene family in the human genome. A subgroup of these human immune genes, those (among others) involved in antigen processing and presentation, are encoded in a single region, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on the short arm of chromosome 6. My laboratory has a long-standing interest in understanding the molecular organization and evolution of the MHC. To this end, we have been generating a range of MHC genomic resources that we make available in the form of maps and databases. Much of the complex data of the immune system can be reduced to binary (on/off) information that can easily be made available and analysed by bioinformatics approaches, thus contributing to better understand immune function via a 'digital immune system'.
脊椎动物与非脊椎动物的主要区别之一在于前者拥有复杂的免疫系统。在过去的4亿到5亿年里，许多新的免疫基因和基因家族不断涌现，它们的产物形成了复杂的通路，为抵御大多数病原体提供保护。人类基因组计划为以前所未有的详细程度研究这些基因和通路奠定了基础。仅免疫球蛋白（Ig）超家族的成员就被发现占人类基因的2%以上，可能构成人类基因组中最大的基因家族。这些人类免疫基因的一个亚组，即那些（包括其他）参与抗原加工和呈递的基因，被编码在一个单一区域，即6号染色体短臂上的主要组织相容性复合体（MHC）。我的实验室长期以来一直致力于了解MHC的分子组织和进化。为此，我们一直在生成一系列MHC基因组资源，并以图谱和数据库的形式提供。免疫系统的许多复杂数据可以简化为二进制（开/关）信息，这些信息可以很容易地通过生物信息学方法提供和分析，从而通过“数字免疫系统”更好地理解免疫功能。
