Novel sequence of the porcine IGHA gene

Two alleles of porcine IGHA have been reported previously. These have been detected by transcriptional length analysis and restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. However, these methods may not be able to detect all polymorphism in porcine IGHA as they rely on the presence of either length variation or polymorphism in a restriction endonuclease recognition site respectively. Here we report a novel sequence occurring in the hinge region of the porcine IGHA gene that was detected using PCR-SSCP analysis. The novel sequence had two nucleotides that are missing at the splice-acceptor site relative to the previously reported IGHA-A sequence. Further identification of allelic variation in porcine IGHA may require an alternative typing system to be developed.