Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

The Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) encodes proteins critical to the vertebrate immune response; therefore MHC diversity is an indicator of population health. I have (1) Isolated exon 2 of the class II gene DQA in Tursiops truncatus in the North Indian River Lagoon (IRL) (n=17), South IRL (n=29) and adjacent Atlantic waters (n=20), (2) assessed genetic variability between groups, (3) developed a method to genotype individuals, (4) typed 11 unique alleles in 66 individuals, (5) detected geographic patterns of diversity between estuarine and coastal individuals (FST=0.1255, p<0.05), (6) found evidence of positive selection centered in the binding pockets P1, P6 and P9 of the peptide binding region (w=2.08), (7) found that patterns of polymorphism did not closely match patterns of diversity in neutral markers, (8) performed a pilot study with Orcinus orca. The initial findings highlight the need for further comparative work and suggest that silent mutations are not neutral.

Extent

x, 75 p. : ill. (some col.)

Comments

by Tatiana Ferrer.|Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.|Includes bibliography.|Mode of access: World Wide Web.|System requirements: Adobe Reader.|by Tatiana Ferrer.

Identifier

FADT3362335

Format

pdf

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