Centro de Investigacão em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO)/InBio Laboratório Associado, Universidade do Porto, Vairão, Portugal.
Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto (FCUP), Porto, Portugal.
J Anim Ecol. 2018 Nov;87(6):1497-1499. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.12901.
In Focus: Beton, C. H., Delahay, R. J., Smith, F. A. P., Robertson, A., McDonald, R. A., Young, A. J., Burke T. A., & Hodgson, D. (2018). Inbreeding intensifies sex- and age-dependent disease in a wild mammal. Journal of Animal Ecology, 87, 1497-1499. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12878 Increasing crossbreeding of relatives promotes inbreeding which, in turn, can cause a reduction in fitness and the emergence of a phenomenon known as inbreeding depression. Benton et al., used the badger (Meles meles)-Mycobacterium bovis model system to study the relationship between inbreeding, disease, ageing and sex. A link between multilocus homozygosity (general effect) and TB progression (measured as antibody response to infection) and between homozygosity at specific loci (local effect) and TB progression were established in this study, highlighting the importance of host genetic background in determining host disease outcomes, and thus on shaping disease dynamics in wild populations. Moreover, the authors demonstrated for the first time in a natural population that this positive association might be modulated by sex and age. In infected individuals, inbreeding only affects disease progression in adult females.
贝通、C.H.、德拉海、R.J.、史密斯、F.A.P.、罗伯逊、A.、麦克唐纳、R.A.、杨、A.J.、伯克、T.A. 和霍奇森、D.（2018）。近亲繁殖加剧了野生动物的性别和年龄依赖疾病。动物生态学杂志，87，1497-1499。https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12878 增加近亲繁殖会促进近亲繁殖，这反过来又会导致适应能力下降和出现所谓的近交衰退现象。本研究中，贝通等人利用獾（Meles meles）-牛分枝杆菌模型系统研究了近亲繁殖、疾病、衰老和性别之间的关系。本研究确立了多基因座纯合性（一般效应）与 TB 进展（以感染后抗体反应衡量）之间以及特定基因座纯合性（局部效应）与 TB 进展之间的联系，强调了宿主遗传背景在决定宿主疾病结果中的重要性，从而影响了野生种群中的疾病动态。此外，作者首次在自然种群中证明，这种正相关可能受到性别和年龄的调节。在感染个体中，近亲繁殖仅影响成年雌性的疾病进展。
