Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard?
Author
Summers, Kyle; Crespi, Bernard
Abstract
Cadherins are homophilic cell surface adhesion proteins, some of which mediate interactions between maternal and foetal tissues during mammalian pregnancy. David Haig suggested that these proteins may
exhibit ‘green-beard gene’ effects, whereby the nature of binding between identical alleles in mother and foetus leads to differential levels of resource transfer. The selfish effects of such self-recognizing alleles should, however, be suppressed over evolutionary time by unlinked genes, which is expected to lead to antagonistic coevolution between placentally expressed cadherins and unlinked modifiers. Such molecular coevolution should leave a signature of positive selection, with high ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous amino acid substitution.We present evidence that three placentally expressed cadherin genes, E-cadherin, P-cadherin and VE-cadherin, have been subject to positive selection. By contrast, a ‘control’ cadherin that is not expressed in the placenta, H-cadherin, showed no evidence of selection. These results provide support for the hypothesis that the cadherin genes involved in maternal–foetal interactions have
been subject to green-beard-effect mutations over the course of evolutionary history, leading to antagonistic coevolution with suppressing elements from the parliament of genes. Originally published Proc Biol Sci, Vol. 272, No. 1563, March 2005
Subject
Date
2005-03-22
Citation:
APA:
Summers, Kyle, & Crespi, Bernard. (March 2005).
Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard?.
Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences,
272(1563),
643-
649. Retrieved from
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3088
MLA:
Summers, Kyle, and Crespi, Bernard.
"Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard?". Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.
272:1563. (643-649),
March 2005.
September 30, 2023.
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3088.
Chicago:
Summers, Kyle and Crespi, Bernard,
"Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard?," Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences 272, no.
1563 (March 2005),
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3088 (accessed
September 30, 2023).
AMA:
Summers, Kyle, Crespi, Bernard.
Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard?. Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.
March 2005;
272(1563):
643-649.
http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3088. Accessed
September 30, 2023.
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Publisher
East Carolina University