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Hagfish Leukocytes Express a Paired Receptor Family with a Variable Domain Resembling Those of Antigen Receptors^1,2

Takashi Suzuki^*, Tadasu Shin-I, Asao Fujiyama^,¶,||, Yuji Kohara^, and Masanori Kasahara^3,*

^* Department of Biosystems Science, School of Advanced Sciences, and Departments of Informatics and Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai), Hayama, Japan; Center for Genetic Resource Information and ^¶ Division of Theoretical Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan; and ^|| Information Research Division, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

Jawed vertebrates are equipped with TCR and BCR with the capacity to rearrange their V domains. By contrast, jawless vertebrates, represented by hagfish and lampreys, apparently lack such receptors. We describe in this study a family of hagfish genes carrying a single V-type domain resembling those of TCR/BCR. This multigene family, which we call agnathan paired receptors resembling Ag receptors (APAR), is expressed in leukocytes and predicted to encode a group of membrane glycoproteins with organizations characteristic of paired Ig-like receptors, consisting of activating and inhibitory forms. APAR has a J region in its V-type domain, and its V and J regions are encoded in a single exon. Thus, APAR is a member of the emerging families of diversified, innate immune-type receptors with TCR/BCR-like V-type domains and has many of the features expected for a primordial TCR/BCR-like receptor. The extracellular domain of APAR may be descended from a V-type domain postulated to have acquired recombination signal sequences in a jawed vertebrate lineage.

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