Mark A. HansonMar 6
Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23 @[email protected] presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun). Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects bit.ly/DrsHGT 1/🧵
Show threadMark A. HansonMar 6
There have been a number of papers in recent years highlighting how important single antimicrobial peptide (AMP) genes, or even polymorphisms, can decide life-or-death in insects, or susceptibility to chronic infection in mammals. Examples: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... bit.ly/MyersCats 2/n

Ecology-relevant bacteria driv...
Show threadMark A. Hanson
AMP genes are also super rapidly evolving. Immune genes tend to evolve faster than 99% of the genome, but AMPs are even more confusing as they are short & often fail to be annotated. They also duplicate, & copies or even gene families can be lost. That's made it puzzling to study AMP evolution 3/n
Mar 6 at 8:22amWeb
Show threadMark A. HansonMar 6
Convergent evolution of DptB occurred in fruit flies separated by >100ma[1]. Many P-rich peptides look the same across dolphins, firebugs, or flies[2]. When are similar AMPs convergent vs shared ancestry? 1. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 2. www.nature.com/articles/s41... or... door #3? 4/n

Structural basis for translati...