The essential detail: the genetics and genomics of the primate immune response

Next-generation sequencing technologies have led to rapid progress in the fields of human and nonhuman primate (NHP) genomics. The less expensive and more efficient technologies have enabled the sequencing of human genomes from multiple populations and the sequencing of many NHP species. NHP genomes have been sequenced for two main reasons: (1) their importance as animal models in biomedical research and (2) their phylogenetic relationship to humans and use in derivative evolutionary studies. NHPs are valuable animal models for a variety of diseases, most notably for human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome research, and for vaccine development. Knowledge about the variation in primate immune response loci can provide essential insights into relevant immune function. However, perhaps ironically considering their central role in infectious disease, the accumulation of sequence detail from genomic regions harboring immune response loci, such as the major histocompatibility complex and killer immunoglobulin-like receptors, has been slow. This deficiency is, at least in part, due to the highly repetitive and polymorphic nature of these regions and is being addressed by the application of special approaches to targeted sequencing of the immune response genomic regions. We discuss one such targeting approach that has successfully yielded complete phased genomic sequences from complex genomic regions and is now being used to resequence macaque and other primate major histocompatibility complex regions. The essential detail contained within the genomics of the NHP immune response is now being assembled, and the realization of precise comparisons between NHP and human immune genomics is close at hand, further enhancing the NHP animal model in the search for effective treatments for human disease.