Functional roles of evolutionary conserved motifs and residues in vertebrate chemokine receptors

Chemokine receptors regulate cell migration and homing. They belong to the rhodopsin-like family of GPCRs. Their ancestor genes emerged in the early stages of vertebrate evolution. Since then, the family has been greatly expanded through whole and segmental genome duplication events. During evolution, many amino acid changes have been introduced in individual chemokine receptors, but certain motifs and residues are highly conserved. Previously,...