Studies using the European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus contributed to elucidating numerous fundamental aspects of antibody structure and diversification mechanisms and continue to be valuable for the development and testing of therapeutic humanized polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. Additionally, during the last two decades, the use of the European rabbit as an animal model has been increasingly extended to many human diseases. This review documents the continuing wide utility of the rabbit as a reliable disease model for development of therapeutics and vaccines and studies of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying many human diseases. Examples include syphilis, tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, acute hepatic failure and diseases caused by noroviruses, ocular herpes, and papillomaviruses. The use of rabbits for vaccine development studies, which began with Louis Pasteur’s rabies vaccine in 1881, continues today with targets that include the potentially blinding HSV-1 virus infection and HIV-AIDS. Additionally, two highly fatal viral diseases, rabbit hemorrhagic disease and myxomatosis, affect the European rabbit and provide unique models to understand co-evolution between a vertebrate host and viral pathogens.

ILs, as essential innate immune modulators, are involved in an array of biological processes. In the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12A, IL-12B, IL-15 and IL-18 have been implicated in inflammatory processes and in the immune response against rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus and myxoma virus infections. In this study we characterized these ILs in six Lagomorpha species (European rabbit, pygmy rabbit, two cottontail rabbit species, European brown hare and American pika). Overall, these ILs are conserved between lagomorphs, including in their exon/intron structure. Most differences were observed between leporids and American pika. Indeed, when comparing both, some relevant differences were observed in American pika, such as the location of the stop codon in IL-1α and IL-2, the existence of a different transcript in IL8 and the number of cysteine residues in IL-1β. Changes at N-glycosylation motifs were also detected in IL-1, IL-10, IL-12B and IL-15. IL-1α is the protein that presents the highest evolutionary distances, which is in contrast to IL-12A where the distances between lagomorphs are the lowest. For all these ILs, sequences of human and European rabbit are more closely related than between human and mouse or European rabbit and mouse.

Cartilaginous fish (sharks, rays, and chimeras) comprise the oldest living jawed vertebrates with a mammalian-like adaptive immune system based on immunoglobulins (Ig), T-cell receptors (TCRs), and the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Here, we show that the cartilaginous fish “adaptive MHC” is highly regimented and compact, containing (i) a classical MHC class Ia (MHC-Ia) region containing antigen processing (antigen peptide transporters and immunoproteasome) and presenting (MHC-Ia) genes, (ii) an MHC class II (MHC-II) region (with alpha and beta genes) with linkage to beta-2-microglobulin (β2m) and bromodomain-containing 2, (iii) nonclassical MHC class Ib (MHC-Ib) regions with 450 million-year-old lineages, and (iv) a complement C4 associated with the MHC-Ia region. No MHC-Ib genes were found outside of the elasmobranch MHC. Our data suggest that both MHC-I and MHC-II genes arose after the second round of whole-genome duplication (2R) on a human chromosome (huchr) 6 precursor. Further analysis of MHC paralogous regions across early branching taxa from all jawed vertebrate lineages revealed that Ig/TCR genes likely arose on a precursor of the huchr9/12/14 MHC paralog. The β2m gene is linked to the Ig/TCR genes in some vertebrates suggesting that it was present at 1R, perhaps as the donor of C1 domain to the primordial MHC gene. In sum, extant cartilaginous fish exhibit a conserved and prototypical MHC genomic organization with features found in various vertebrates, reflecting the ancestral arrangement for the jawed vertebrates.

ILs are part of the immune system and are involved in multiple biological activities. ILs have been shown to evolve under positive selection; however, little information exists regarding which codons are specifically selected. By using different codon-based maximum-likelihood (ML) approaches, signatures of positive selection in mammalian ILs were searched for. Sequences of 46 ILs were retrieved from publicly available databases of mammalian genomes to detect signatures of positive selection in individual codons. Evolutionary analyses were conducted under two ML frameworks, the HyPhy package implemented in the Data Monkey Web Server and CODEML implemented in PAML. Signatures of positive selection were found in 28 ILs: IL-1A and B; IL-2, IL-4 to IL-10, IL-12A and B; IL-14 to IL-17A and C; IL-18, IL-20 to IL-22, IL-25, IL-26, IL-27B, IL-31, IL-34, IL-36A; and G. Codons under positive selection varied between 1 and 15. No evidence of positive selection was detected in IL-13; IL-17B and F; IL-19, IL-23, IL-24, IL-27A; or IL-29. Most mammalian ILs have sites evolving under positive selection, which may be explained by the multitude of biological processes in which ILs are enrolled. The results obtained raise hypotheses concerning the ILs functions, which should be pursued by using mutagenesis and crystallographic approaches.