The associations between MHC genes and metazoan parasites in the fish populations living under the different level of environmental pollution
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | The 35th Annual Congress of the Parasitological Society of Southern Africa, Windhoek (Namibia), Book of Abstracts |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Ecology |
| Keywords | MHC genes;fish;parasite |
| Description | The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) represents a group of genes of the highly polymorphic loci encoding the proteins that bind a peptide fragments derived from the foreign antigens and stimulate an immune response. The specific role of MHC as a mediator of the adaptive immune response suggests that the MHC profile could reflect the effects of environmental changes connected with chemical pollution as well as the indirect parasite-mediated selection. However, until now MHC variation has not been often used in the pollutant assays. In our study we tested whether the immunogenetic profiles measured by nucleotide and amino-acid substitutions in MHC class IIB (DAB genes) predominantly in peptide-binding regions vary between fish populations living under conditions of different environmental stress and parasite pressure. In the freshwater fish gudgeon, Gobio gobio, three populations collected from the localities differing by the environmental pollution (heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants) were studied. Fish were investigated for all metazoan parasites and the representatives of Monogenea, Digenea, Cestoda and Acanthocephala were recorded. The differences in presence or absence of the metazoan parasite species were observed as well as the parasite intensity infection was different when comparing three localities. Moreover, the different composition of parasite communities was observed concerning the proportions of specialist and generalist parasites. Even several MHC haplotypes were shared between populations, the specific alleles (or the specific nucleotide or amino-acid motives within alleles) were observed in each locality. The relationships between parasitism and MHC diversity in the association with different level of environmental pollution were analyzed and discussed. |
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