Characterization of ovine Toll-like receptor 9 protein coding region, comparative analysis, detection of mutations and maedi visna infection.

One of the major roles of innate immunity system is the recognition and the determination of the nature of the antigen. This ability is encompassed by specific receptors as Toll-like receptors (TLRs). TLR9 recognizes bacterial and viral CpG motifs, while their potent immunostimulation effect seems to be promising for lentiviral therapies. Recent studies, however, show the presence of a big polymorphism within the TLR genes and the linkage between substitutions and susceptibility to various infections. Moreover, different recognition ability seems to be utilized by different species and possibly breeds. In this study, we characterized the protein coding region of ovine TLR9 gene. By using comparative analysis of two closely related species and humans, we suggest, which characteristics of protein could be responsible for altered recognition. Furthermore, analyzing the presence of the substitutions, we show the intraspecies polymorphism and its possible implications, while attempting to define the association of discovered substitutions with the maedi visna infection.