Presence of the di-leucine motif in the cytoplasmic tail of the pig FcRn alpha chain.

The sequence of the pig FcRn alpha chain was recently published. The lack of a conserved di-leucine motif in the cytoplasmic tail suggests a rare polymorphism in the described animal, alternatively, a sequencing error. We therefore cloned and sequenced the pig FcRn alpha chain. Our sequence, along with a previous NCBI GenBank submission and five pig derived EST clones clearly demonstrate the presence of di-leucine motif in the cytoplasmic tail of the pig FcRn. No polymorphism in the cytoplasmic tail-encoding region was found in 25 animals from six pig breeds based on single-stranded conformation polymorphism and sequencing analysis, suggesting that the previously described pig FcRn alpha chain may represent a sequencing error in the 3' portion of the gene.