Understanding the evolution of immune genes in jawed vertebrates Vinkler, Michal Gómez Samblás, María Mercedes Adaptation Adaptive immunity Evolutionary immunology Genomics Host-parasite Interactions Imunogenetics Innate immunity MHC Molecular evolution Vertebrates Driven by co-evolution with pathogens, host immunity continuously adapts to optimize defence against pathogens within a given environment. Recent advances in genetics, genomics and transcriptomics have enabled a more detailed investigation into how immunogenetic variation shapes the diversity of immune responses seen across domestic and wild animal species. However, a deeper understanding of the diverse molecular mechanisms that shape immunity within and among species is still needed to gain insight into—and generate evolutionary hypotheses on—the ultimate drivers of immunological differences. Here, we discuss current advances in our understanding of molecular evolution underpinning jawed vertebrate immunity. First, we introduce the immunome concept, a framework for characterizing genes involved in immune defence from a comparative perspective, then we outline how immune genes of interest can be identified. Second, we focus on how different selection modes are observed acting across groups of immune genes and propose hypotheses to explain these differences. We then provide an overview of the approaches used so far to study the evolutionary heterogeneity of immune genes on macro and microevolutionary scales. Finally, we discuss some of the current evidence as to how specific pathogens affect the evolution of different groups of immune genes. This review results from the collective discussion on the current key challenges in evolutionary immunology conducted at the ESEB 2021 Online Satellite Symposium: Molecular evolution of the vertebrate immune system, from the lab to natural populations. 2023-06-29T10:51:53Z 2023-06-29T10:51:53Z 2023-05-31 journal article Vinkler, M., Fiddaman, S. R., Těšický, M., O'Connor, E. A., Savage, A. E., Lenz, T. L., ... & Westerdahl, H. (2023). Understanding the evolution of immune genes in jawed vertebrates. Journal of Evolutionary Biology.[DOI: 10.1111/jeb.14181] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/82977 DOI: 10.1111/jeb.14181 eng info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/ 853272 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Wiley