Cloning, Evolution and Expression Characteristics of IFN- in Pig

For studying the regulation and function of interferon alpha in pigs,IFN- cDNA including the coding sequence was obtained by RT-PCR with the RNA isolated from pigs and submitted to GenBank with the accession number JQ839262.Bioinformatics analysis showed that the IFN- gene encode a protein of 189 amino acids with a predicted molecular weight of 21.32 ku and the isoelectric point of 6.37.Protein structure analysis showed that IFN- protein contains a conserved domain,no transmembrane regions and has a signal peptide.Hydrophobicity analysis indicates that the N-terminus of the protein is hydrophobic and C-terminus is hydrophilic.The probability of secreting into periplasmic is 92.2%.Phylogenetic results indicates that the pig has the closest relationship with cattle and goat.We tested the IFN- mRNA expression in 13 tissues by qPCR.The result show that the expression is high in skin,lung,muscle,heart,spleen.This study provide an experimental basis for further study on the expression and regulation of pig alpha interferon gene.