Expression of interleukin-6 in porcine, ovine, and bovine preimplantation conceptuses

✍ Scribed by Dr. Nagappan Mathialagan; James A. Bixby; R. Michael Roberts

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 711 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1040-452X
• DOI: 10.1002/mrd.1080320404

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A porcine interleukin‐6 (pIL6) cDNA has been cloned from pig spleen cDNA library to provide information that would allow us to study IL‐6 mRNA expression during pregnancy of several domestic Artiodactyla. The cDNA is 1058 bp long and with a single open reading frame that encodes a 212 amino acid polypeptide with 28‐residue signal sequence. It shares 61% and 43% amino acid sequence identity with human and mouse IL‐6, respectively. PCR procedures with primers designed from regions of sequence conserved between human and pig have been used to identify IL‐6 cDNA in λgt11 libraries constructed from day 15–16 (sheep), day 17 (cattle), and day 13–17 (pig) conceptus mRNA. The presence of IL‐6 mRNA in elongating preimplantation ovine (days 13–25), porcine (days 13–21), and bovine (days 16–20) conceptuses was also demonstrated by PCR after reverse transcription of total ribonucleic acid with reverse transcriptase and by solution hybridization with a pIL‐6 cRNA probe. These observations suggest that IL‐6 is a product of these early conceptuses and may be involved in early maternal responses to the presence of an embryo within the uterus.