Annotation and genetic diversity of the chicken collagenous lectins

Collectins and ficolins are multimeric proteins present in various tissues and are actively involved in innate immune responses. In chickens, six different collagenous lectins have been characterized so far: mannose-binding lectin (MBL), surfactant protein A (SP-A), collectin 10 (COLEC10), collectin 11 (COLEC11), collectin 12 (COLEC12), lung lectin (LL) and one ficolin (FCN). However, the structural and functional features of the chicken collectins and ficolin are still not fully understood. Therefore, the aims of this study were: (i) to make an overview of the genetic structure and function of chicken collectins and the ficolin, (ii) to investigate the variation in the chicken collectins and the ficolin gene in different chicken populations, and (iii) to assess the presence of MBL gene variants in different chicken populations. We performed comparative genomic analysis using publically available data. The obtained results showed that collectins and ficolins have conserved protein sequences and gene structure across all vertebrate groups and this is especially notable for COLEC10, COLEC11 and COLEC12. For the purpose of studying the genetic variation, 179 animals from 14 populations were genotyped using 31 SNPs covering five genomic regions. The obtained results revealed low level of heterozygosity in the collagenous lectins except for the COLEC12 gene and the LL-SPA-MBL region compared to heterozygosity at neutral microsatellite markers. In addition, the MBL gene variants were assessed in different chicken populations based on the polymorphisms in the promoter region. We observed 10 previously identified MBL variants with A2/A8 and A4 as the most frequent alleles.