After sequencing and analysis, Selleckchem PF-6463922 the SLA-2-HB alleles were found to comprise 1119 bp with an ORF located within sites 3–1097. Four cysteines at sites 125, 188,

227 and 283 of SLA-2-HB alleles are likely to form two sets of intra-chain disulfide bridge, i.e., Cys125-Cys188 and Cys227-Cys283 refer to HLA-A2 (15). By alignments of SLA-2-HB sequences with other SLA-2 alleles in the IPD database, 11 key variable amino acid sites were found in the extracellular domain of the SLA-2-HB alleles at sites 23(F), 24(I), 43(A), 34(K), 44(K), 50(Q), 73(N), 95(I), 114(R), 155(G), 156(E) and 216(S), and these key variable amino acid sites could be used to differentiate Hebao pig from other pigs. Sites 95(I) and 114(R) MAPK Inhibitor Library mouse are the key binding sites for antigen processing by HLA class I molecules, which indicates that these two amino acid sites might be the key peptide-binding motif of SLA-2-HB alleles for binding nonapeptide derived from virus (9). Further 3D homology modeling of SLA-2-HB01 revealed that SLA-2-HB01 protein had an antigenic binding groove composed of two adjacent helical regions and an eight-stranded-sheet region. An interesting finding is that 73(N), 155(G), 156(E) sites were in α-helical regions while 23(F), 24(I), 95(I), 114(R), and 216(S) sites were all in β-strain regions, except only 43(A), 44(K), 50(Q) sites were outside of antigenic peptides groove of the SLA-2 protein. The finding

indicated that most (eight of 11) of key variable amino acid sites were all in antigenic binding groove and these sites might affect the antigen binding. Our earlier investigation showed that the Hebao pig is strong against infectious disease such as Classical Swine Fever Virus (CSFV), therefore we infer that these key binding sites for antigen processing for SLA-2-HB genes might also determine the function of susceptibility for infection. It is said in folklore that the Hebao pig might have evolved from wild boars. The displayed strong resistance against diseases over Methamphetamine the past 300 years suggests

that the variable amino acids might have evolved from wild boars. The amino acid identities between SLA-2-HB and other SLA-2, SLA-1 and SLA-3 alleles were 86.2–97.0%, 85.0–93.9% and 83.3–88.6%, respectively. The four SLA-2-HB alleles were typical SLA-2 alleles in that they all showed dissimilarity to the SLA-1 and SLA-3 alleles in three amino acids at the start of the signal peptide. According to the amino acid identities of 87.1–97.0% between SLA-2-HB and other SLA-2 alleles, and by reference to the molecular phylogenetic tree and standards to divide new alleles reported by Yan et al. (16), four SLA-2-HB alleles appear to be novel SLA-2 alleles. Alignments of 34 SLA-2 alleles in the IPD database with the four SLA-2-HB alleles using DNAMAN, and then transforming the data into a phylogenetic tree using Mega 5 mapping demonstrated that the SLA-2-HB alleles were relatively distant from other SLA-2 genes.