Hindawi BioMed Research International Volume 2021, Article ID 5546170, 11 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/5546170 Research Article Structural and Evolutionary Adaptation of NOD-Like Receptors in Birds Xueting Ma ,1,2 Baohong Liu ,1,2 Zhenxing Gong ,1,2 Xinmao Yu ,1,2 and Jianping Cai 1,2 1State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Etiological Biology, Key Laboratory of Veterinary Parasitology of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Xujiaping 1, Lanzhou, Gansu Province 730046, China 2Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonoses, Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province 225009, China Correspondence should be addressed to Jianping Cai;
[email protected] Received 25 February 2021; Revised 7 April 2021; Accepted 20 April 2021; Published 30 April 2021 Academic Editor: Hafiz Ishfaq Ahmad Copyright © 2021 Xueting Ma et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. NOD-like receptors (NLRs) are intracellular sensors of the innate immune system that recognize intracellular pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). Little information exists regarding the incidence of positive selection in the evolution of NLRs of birds or the structural differences between bird and mammal NLRs. Evidence of positive selection was identified in four avian NLRs (NOD1, NLRC3, NLRC5, and NLRP3) using the maximum likelihood approach. These NLRs are under different selection pressures which is indicative of different evolution patterns. Analysis of these NLRs showed a lower percentage of codons under positive selection in the LRR domain than seen in the studies of Toll- like receptors (TLRs), suggesting that the LRR domain evolves differently between NLRs and TLRs.