Immunoglobulin T genes in Actinopterygii.

In teleost fishes, there are three immunoglobulin isotypes named immunoglobulin M (IgM), D (IgD), and T (IgT). IgT was the last to be described in teleost fishes, and it is specific to them. From recent fish genomes, we identified and studied the immunoglobulin heavy chain genes in Actinopterygii. For this analysis, a custom bioinformatics and machine learning pipeline, we call CHfinder, was developed that identifies the exons coding for the CH domains of fish immunoglobulins. Some IgT in teleost and holostean fish found from this systematic study have not been previously described. Phylogenetic analysis of the deduced amino acid sequences of the IgT CH1 exons reveals they are similar to the CH1 of IgM. This analysis also shows that the other three domains (CH2, CH3, and CH4) were not the result of recent IgM duplication processes in Actinopterygii, demonstrating that it is an immunoglobulin of earlier origin. The bioinformatics program, CHfinder, is publicly available at https://github.com/compimmuno/CHfinder.