Cloning and Sequencing of the Bottle-Nosed Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) Interferon-γ Gene

Abstract

The bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) interferon-γ (IFN-γ) cDNA was cloned from mitogen stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) RNA utilizing the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The dolphin IFN-γ cDNA was 585 base pairs in length and contained an open reading frame of 498 nucleotides encoding an IFN-γ precursor of 166 amino acids, with cleavage of the putative signal peptide of 19 amino acids. Analysis of the mature amino acid sequences revealed two potential N-linked glycosylation sites. Comparison of the predicted amino acid sequence showed that dolphin IFN-γ shares 86, 85, 63 and 42% similarity with the bovine, ovine, human and mouse IFN-γ_s, respectively.