[Southack]

"Additionally, TLR4 is not present in corals, which contain an ancestral TLR prior to radiation into the chordate TLR family."

Really?! Has that been conclusively determined?

Certainly TLR signaling (re: endotoxic shock) exists in Coral: http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/4/R59

[ahayes]

Please read the paper. The TLR found is ancestral to mammalian TLR, and does not match any of them exactly. TLR4 is not found in any invertebrate.

"Whereas the mammalian TLRs, and some members of the fly Toll/TLR family, have only a carboxy-terminal cysteine-rich motif flanking the LRRs proximal to the membrane, Nematostella NvTLR-1 is predicted to contain both carboxy- and amino-terminal-flanking cysteine-rich motifs in the extracellular part of the protein (Figure 2). This suggests that fly and anemone Toll more closely reflect the ancestral domain structure than do the mammalian TLRs."