Tracing the evolutionary lineage of pattern recognition receptor homologues in vertebrates: An insight into reptilian immunity via de novo sequencing of the wall lizard splenic transcriptome

Reptiles remain a deprived class in the area of genomic and molecular resources for the vertebrate classes. The transition of squamates from aquatic to terrestrial mode of life caused profound changes in their immune system to combat the altered variety of pathogens on land. The current study aims at delineating the evolution of defence mechanisms in wall lizard, Hemidactylus flaviviridis, by exploring its immunome. De novo sequencing of splenic transcriptome from wall lizard on the Illumina Hi-Seq platform generated 258,128 unique transcripts with an average GC content of 45%. Annotation of 555,557 and 6812 transcripts was carried out against NCBI (non-redundant database) and UniProt databases, respectively. The KEGG pathway annotation of transcripts classified them into 39 processes of six pathway function categories. A total of 3824 transcripts, involved in 23 immune-related pathways, were identified in the immune-relevant cluster built by harvesting the genes under KEGG pathways of immune system and immune diseases. Forty-two percent of the immune-relevant cluster was represented by pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs), of which the maximum number of transcripts was attributed to the Toll-like receptor (TLR) signalling pathway. Nine PRRs with potential full-length coding sequences were sorted for phylogenetic analysis and comparative domain analysis across the vertebrate lineage. They included DEC205/lymphocyte antigen 75 (ly75), nucleotide-binding oligomerisation domain-containing protein 1 (NOD1), NOD-like receptor family CARD domain-containing 3 (NLRC3), nucleotide-binding oligomerisation domain, leucine-rich repeat-containing X1 (NLRX1), DDX58/retinoic acid-inducible gene 1 (RIG-1), Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3), TLR4, TLR5 and TLR7. From selection studies of these genes, we inferred positive selection for ly75, NOD1, RIG-1, TLR3 and TLR4. Apart from contributing to the scarce genomic resources available for reptiles and giving a broad scope for the immune-relevant pathways operative in wall lizards, this study will also pave way for evolutionary studies on comparative immunomics.