The evolutionary trajectory of vertebrate adaptive immune systems


This is a hybrid event - with the speaker attending in-person and viewable on Teams.

Lymphocytes of vertebrate adaptive immune systems acquired the capability to assemble, from split genes in the germline, billions of functional antigen receptors. I will, discuss the co-evolutionary origin of somatic diversification of antigen receptors and programmable genome editors, the evolutionary trajectory of quality control mechanisms that suppress undesired self-reactivity, and the unusual structures of immunogenomes of species exercising natural parabiosis