The Breed Differences in SLA Haplotypes from the Pigs for Xenotransplantation Researches in Korea

The porcine MHC is known as SLA (Swine Leukocyte Antigen) which controls immune response from exotic antigens. In order to use for biomedical researches, the establishment of purebred pig lines that are homozygous for the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) alleles has been invaluable animal materials. However, the availability of MHC inbred large animals is very limited. In this study, three SLA class I loci and three class II loci alleles and haplotypes were investigated with using PCR-SSP method in three different pig breeds, which are possibly used for the xenotransplantation researches in Korea. The results indicated that KNP (Korean native pigs) in Jeju island had seven haplotypes (Lr-5.34, 7.23, 31.13, 56.23, 56.30, 59.1 and 65.34), NIH miniature pigs had five haplotypes (Lr-2.2, 2.4, 3.3, 4.2 and 4.4) and Yucatan miniature pigs had four haplotypes (Lr-4.5, 4.7, 6.7 and 25.25), respectively. These results showed that different breeds have different SLA haplotypes, which may indicate that the different immune responses between breeds. Further immunological researches will give more detailed information for the immune responses for these valuable model animals for biomedical researches.