CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, 4485-661 Vairao, Portugal.
Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal.
Viruses. 2022 Jan 18;14(2):169. doi: 10.3390/v14020169.
Chemokine receptors are an important determinant for the infectiousness of different pathogens, which are able to target the host cells by binding to the extracellular domains of these proteins. This is the mechanism of infection of HIV-1, among other concerning human diseases. Over the past years, it has been shown that two chemokine receptors, CCR2 and CCR5, have been shaped by events of gene conversion in different mammalian lineages, which has been linked to a possible selective advantage against pathogens. Here, by taking advantage of available bat genomes, we present the first insight of CCR2 and CCR5 evolution within the Chiroptera order. In total, four independent events of recombination between CCR2 and CCR5 were detected: two in a single species, ; one in two species from the Rhinolophoidea superfamily; and one in four species from the Pteropodidae family. The regions affected by the gene conversions were generally extensive and always encompassed extracellular domains. Overall, we demonstrate that CCR2 and CCR5 have been subject to extensive gene conversion in multiple species of bats. Considering that bats are known to be large reservoirs of virus in nature, these results might indicate that chimeric - genes might grant some bat species a selective advantage against viruses that rely in the extracellular portions of either CCR2 or CCR5 as gateways into the cell.
趋化因子受体是决定不同病原体传染性的一个重要因素，这些病原体能够通过与这些蛋白质的细胞外结构域结合来靶向宿主细胞。这就是 HIV-1 等令人关注的人类疾病感染的机制。过去几年的研究表明，两种趋化因子受体，即 CCR2 和 CCR5，已经通过不同哺乳动物谱系中的基因转换事件而形成，这与针对病原体的可能选择优势有关。在这里，我们利用现有的蝙蝠基因组，首次深入了解了 Chiroptera 目内 CCR2 和 CCR5 的进化。总共检测到 CCR2 和 CCR5 之间的四个独立重组事件：两个发生在单个物种中，一个发生在 Rhinolophoidea 超科的两个物种中，一个发生在 Pteropodidae 科的四个物种中。受基因转换影响的区域通常很广泛，并且始终包含细胞外结构域。总体而言，我们证明 CCR2 和 CCR5 在多种蝙蝠物种中经历了广泛的基因转换。考虑到蝙蝠在自然界中被认为是病毒的重要宿主，这些结果可能表明嵌合基因可能使一些蝙蝠物种对依赖 CCR2 或 CCR5 的细胞外部分作为进入细胞的门户的病毒具有选择优势。
