title: Expression of interleukin-6 in porcine, ovine, and bovine preimplantation conceptuses.
abstract: A porcine interleukin-6 (pIL-6) 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 lambda gt11 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia 65211.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mathialagan
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Bixby
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Roberts
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D001755:Blastocyst / Q000378:metabolism*; D015139:Blotting, Southern; D002417:Cattle; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D004247:DNA; D005260:Female; D015723:Gene Library; D015850:Interleukin-6 / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011247:Pregnancy; D012756:Sheep; D013552:Swine
chemical_list: D015850:Interleukin-6; D004247:DNA