The nucleotide sequence of bovine MHC class II DQB and DRB genes

The nucleotide sequences of most of the exons and parts of the introns of two BoLA-DQB genes and two BoLA-DRB genes have been determined. The structure of these genes is very similar to that of human major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II genes. The two DQB genes probably represent true alleles. Based on the exons sequenced, both DQB genes and one of the DRB genes seem to be functional. The other DRB gene is a pseudogene; stopcodons are found in the exons encoding the second and transmembrane domain and, furthermore, a 2 base pair (bp) deletion has occurred in the leader exon which places the initiation start codon out of frame. Also in this pseudogene, an almost perfect inverted repeat of 200 bp is found flanking the exon encoding the first domain, which might have been the result of a duplication/inversion event. The sequences presented in this paper do not contain any repetitions. Therefore, DNA fragments containing these sequences can be used as homologous bovine probes in restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis to study disease associations in cattle.