| TNF-α is an important human cytokine that imparts dualism in malaria pathogenicity. At high dosages, TNF-α is believed to provoke pathogenicity in cerebral malaria; while at lower dosages TNF-α is protective against severe human malaria. In order to understand the human TNF-α gene and to ascertain evolutionary aspects of its dualistic nature for malaria pathogenicity, we characterized this gene in detail in six different mammalian taxa. The avian taxon, Gallus gallus was included in our study, as TNF-α is not present in birds; therefore, a tandemly placed duplicate of TNF-α (LT-α or TNF-β) was included. A comparative study was made of nucleotide length variations, intron and exon sizes and number variations, differential compositions of coding to... |
