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Nutritional and Immunological Lessons Learned from the Porcine Genome
Author(s) -
Dawson Harry D
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.27.1_supplement.643.6
Subject(s) - biology , genome , gene , human genome , homology (biology) , rodent , genetics , laboratory mouse , immunity , computational biology , immune system , ecology
Emerging evidence suggests that swine are a scientifically acceptable intermediate species (rodent‐human) for conducting scientific research relevant to humans. The swine genome has recently been sequenced; but, a large‐scale analysis of its content with respect to genes involved in nutrition or immunity has not been reported. To this end, a genome‐based, analysis of model suitability of pig was conducted. This analysis revealed that familial gene expansion, driven mostly by immune‐related genes, has occurred in pigs relative to humans at half the rate of mice to humans. Furthermore, pigs and humans have 3 fold less unique genes compared to mice. The number of pig‐human restricted orthologs is 5 and 8 fold greater than the number of mouse‐human or mouse‐pig restricted orthologs respectively. Among shared orthologs, protein sequence homology is higher between human and pig compared to human and mice. Furthermore, protein functional domain preservation between human and pig is nearly twice that of mouse to human and pig to mouse. This large‐scale comparative assessment of the pig, mouse and human genomes revealed an overwhelming similarity of swine to humans for most parameters. This work will contribute significantly toward using swine as models to promote both human and animal health particularly those with a nutritional and immunological component.