Identification Of CDNA Of MHC ClassⅡGenes From The Hainan Eld’s Deer

As a subspecies of Eld’s deer, Hainan Eld’s deer are restricted to Hainan island of China. Because of hunting and habitat destruction, its population have suffered a great decline, once smaller than 50. After over 30 years of in situ conservation as well as ex situ conservation, the Hainan Eld’s deer population is larger than 2000 nowadays. But there’re worries over the genetic diversity of these deer due to severe bottleneck effect in history, which may reduce disease resistance and viability.The major histocompatibility complex(MHC) is a multigene family of vertebrates, encoding a variety of transmembrane glycoproteins on cell surface, which present antigenic peptides to T cells and thus initiate specific immune responses. The mammal MHC class II genes contain several groups of functional genes such as DRA, DRB, DQA and DQB, encoding molecules responsible for presenting exogenous antigens. MHC is proved to be a useful indicator reflecting population genetic diversity or assessing potential of survival owing to its immediate connection with disease resistance.In this study, we isolated cDNA of functional MHC class II genes of a Hainan Eld’s deer, laying a foundation for further study. We got 8 full-length cDNA (2 DRA, 2 DRB,2DQA,2DQB) as well as a part of another DQB allele. By comparison we found that these sequences share a great similarity with sequences of cow or sheep. We confirmed that we have got all cDNA of DRA and DQA genes by the way of reconstitution of the SSCP-HD banding patterns. And we got intron 2 and intron 3 of the DRA and DQA genes, too.