Sammendrag
Climate changes the geographic range of both species as well as pathogens, causing a potential increase in the vulnerability of populations or species with limited genetic diversity. With advances in high throughput sequencing (HTS)
technologies, we can now define functional expressed genetic diversity of wild species at a larger scale and identify populations at risk. Previous studies have used genomic DNA to define major histocompatibility complex (MHC)
class II diversity in reindeer. Varying numbers of expressed genes found in many ungulates strongly argues for using cDNA in MHC typing strategies to ensure that diversity estimates relate to functional genes. We have used available reindeer genomes to identify candidate genes and established an
HTS approach to define expressed MHC class I and class II diversity. To capture
a broad diversity we included samples from wild reindeer from Southern
Norway, semi-domesticated reindeer from Northern Norway and reindeer
from the high Artic archipelago Svalbard. Our data show a medium MHC
diversity in semi-domesticated and wild Norwegian mainland reindeer, and
low MHC diversity reindeer in Svalbard reindeer. The low immune diversity in
Svalbard reindeer provides a potential risk if the pathogenic pressure changes
in response to altered environmental conditions due to climate change, or
increased human-related activity.
climate change, MHC, reindeer, immune diversity, Svalbard, Norway
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