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Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on July 1, 2007.
Genetics, Vol. 176, 2501-2508, August 2007, Copyright © 2007
doi:10.1534/genetics.107.074815
Major Histocompatibility Complex Heterozygosity Reduces Fitness in Experimentally Infected Mice
Petteri Ilmonen*,
,1,
Dustin J. Penn*,,
Kristy Damjanovich*,
Linda Morrison*,
Laleh Ghotbi* and
Wayne K. Potts*
* Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 and Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1160 Vienna, Austria
1 Corresponding author: Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Savoyenstraße 1a, A-1160 Vienna, Austria.
E-mail: p.ilmonen{at}klivv.oeaw.ac.at
It is often suggested that heterozygosity at major histocompatibility complex (MHC) loci confers enhanced resistance to infectious diseases (heterozygote advantage, HA, hypothesis), and overdominant selection should contribute to the evolution of these highly polymorphic genes. The evidence for the HA hypothesis is mixed and mainly from laboratory studies on inbred congenic mice, leaving the importance of MHC heterozygosity for natural populations unclear. We tested the HA hypothesis by infecting mice, produced by crossbreeding congenic C57BL/10 with wild ones, with different strains of Salmonella, both in laboratory and in large population enclosures. In the laboratory, we found that MHC influenced resistance, despite interacting wild-derived background loci. Surprisingly, resistance was mostly recessive rather than dominant, unlike in most inbred mouse strains, and it was never overdominant. In the enclosures, heterozygotes did not show better resistance, survival, or reproductive success compared to homozygotes. On the contrary, infected heterozygous females produced significantly fewer pups than homozygotes. Our results show that MHC effects are not masked on an outbred genetic background, and that MHC heterozygosity provides no immunological benefits when resistance is recessive, and can actually reduce fitness. These findings challenge the HA hypothesis and emphasize the need for studies on wild, genetically diverse species.
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