Amazing stuff!
"Scientists discovered that more than 500 species of vesper bats possess two separate sets of antibody genes, an immune arrangement never before found in mammals. The surprising system could help explain how bats tolerate so many viruses without becoming seriously ill."
"... that the world’s largest family of bats has two distinct copies of the genes that produce antibodies, the specialized proteins that help the immune system recognize and fight infections. Every other known mammal has only one such set. ..."
From the abstract:
"Bats are major reservoirs of viruses that can be transmitted to humans in zoonotic outbreaks.
Antibody-mediated immunity plays an important role in shaping viral evolution and immune evasion but remains understudied in bats.
All known mammals have a single immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) gene locus and up to two light chain loci.
We have identified dual IgH loci on separate chromosomes in 26 bat species, highlighting extreme variation of immunogenetic architecture in order Chiroptera. In a model species, Eptesicus fuscus, we leveraged single-cell transcriptomes to confirm functional rearrangement and expression of both loci, but with different mechanisms for generating antibody diversity and function. These results provide a foundation for analysis of humoral immunity and pathogen response in bats."
How bats tolerate viruses: Tulane study sheds light on one of nature’s biggest immune mysteries (original news release)
Immunoglobulin heavy chain locus duplication in bats (open access)
Fig. 1. Genomic annotations and analysis for both IGH loci.
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