Molecular Evolution of Interferon-Epsilon (IFNε) Pseudogene Modulates Innate and Specific Antiviral Immunity in Manis javanica

Figure 3

The conserved Ig domain of IFN was found by pinpointing amino acid locations that were favorably chosen. For this, we utilized the Phyre tool (http://www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk/phyre2/html) to draw positively selected regions onto the crystal structure of the IFN protein from M. javanica, which served as a reference sequence. The INFabd domain, which contains the ligand-binding site, contains the residues that have been selected. These include a cluster of sites immediately following the signal sequence and the ligand-binding site region. The precise localization of favorably chosen amino acid sites in IFN proteins. With conservation values ranging from 1 to 9, we were able to make educated guesses about which amino acids will be conserved. Conservation values of 1-4 are considered variable, 5-6 show average conservation, and 7-9 indicate very high conservation.