Cloning and sequencing of a bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) interleukin-1alpha and -1beta complementary DNAs.

Abstract

The bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) IL-1alpha and IL-1beta cDNA were cloned from mitogen stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) RNA utilizing the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The sequences of these cDNAs showed that dolphin IL-1alpha and IL-1beta clones contained open reading frames encoding 265 and 266 amino acids, respectively. Comparison of the deduced amino acid showed that dolphin IL-1alpha sequence shared 77, 77, 77, 74, 71, 65 and 57% similarity with the bovine, ovine, porcine, equine, feline, human and mouse IL-1alpha sequences, respectively. Similarly, the amino acid sequence showed that dolphin IL-1beta shared 77, 77, 74, 69, 65, 64 and 63% similarity with the bovine, ovine, porcine, equine, feline, human and mouse IL-1beta sequences, respectively. The relatedness of dolphin IL-1alpha and IL-1beta were relatively distant with 21% amino acid homology.