Immunogenomics: towards a digital immune system.

Abstract

One of the major differences that set apart vertebrates from non-vertebrates is the presence of a complex immune system. Over the past 400-500 million years, many novel immune genes and gene families have emerged and their products form sophisticated pathways providing protection against most pathogens. The Human Genome Project has laid the foundation to study these genes and pathways in unprecedented detail. Members of the immunoglobulin (Ig) superfamily alone were found to make up over 2% of human genes possibly constituting the largest gene family in the human genome. A subgroup of these human immune genes, those (among others) involved in antigen processing and presentation, are encoded in a single region, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on the short arm of chromosome 6. My laboratory has a long-standing interest in understanding the molecular organization and evolution of the MHC. To this end, we have been generating a range of MHC genomic resources that we make available in the form of maps and databases. Much of the complex data of the immune system can be reduced to binary (on/off) information that can easily be made available and analysed by bioinformatics approaches, thus contributing to better understand immune function via a 'digital immune system'.