An article co-authored by Assistant Professor of Biology Andrea Townsend appears in the April issue of PeerJ. The article, “Patterns of evolution of MHC class II genes of crows (Corvus) suggest trans-species polymorphism,” describes similarity among crow species in North America and Japan in the major histocompatibility gene complex.
According to Townsend, these results “emphasize how ancient alleles that play important roles in immune function can be conserved, even after the species themselves have diverged.”
Researchers from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Hayama, Japan; the University of Oxford, UK; and the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tsukuba, Japan, also contributed to the article.
