In Silico Characterization of Immunoglobulins in Selected Teleost Species

Immunoglobulins are highly specialized glycoproteins that can recognize a great variety of antigens from bacteria, viruses, and other disease-causing organisms and recruit other cells and molecules to destroy these pathogens. This research is aimed at characterizing immunoglobulin among related teleost species using an in-silico approach. Nucleotide sequences of the immunoglobulin gene from different teleost species were retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website, and multiple sequence alignment was conducted using ClustalW in MEGA 11 to evaluate similarities and differences among the retrieved sequences. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted to infer evolutionary relationships among the species based on their immunoglobulin gene sequences. Pairwise genetic distance analysis was also conducted; both analyses were carried out in MEGA 11. The evolutionary relationship among the sequences, executed using the maximum likelihood method, generated a consensus tree from 500 bootstrap replications with two clusters of almost equal size: the larger cluster has 14 sequences, while the smaller has 12 sequences. The values for pairwise genetic distance range between 0.00 and 0.72. Moreover, the genetic distance is relatively small when sequences 19 to 26 pair up, having values in the range of 0.00 to 0.22. Conversely, pairwise comparison outside that range is dominated by values above 0.60. This research reveals that variations that occur in the immunoglobulin gene are high in most species. Furthermore, this in silico analysis is an innovative approach that can significantly impact the formulation of antibodies with great specificity and potency against diseases.