Skip to main content
ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #366155
Research Project: Evaluation of Swine Immunity and Development of Novel Immune and Genomic Intervention Strategies to Prevent and/or Treat Respiratory Diseases of Swine

Location: Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory

Title: Importance of the MHC (SLA) in swine health and biomedical research

Author
item HAMMER, SABINE - University Of Veterinary Medicine
item HO, CHAK-SUM - Gift Of Hope Organ And Tissue Network
item ANDO, ASAKO - Tokai University School Of Medicine
item ROGEL-GAILLARD, CLAIRE - Inra, Génétique Animale Et Biologie Intégrative , Jouy-En-josas, France
item CHARLES, MATHIEU - Inra, Génétique Animale Et Biologie Intégrative , Jouy-En-josas, France
item TECTOR, MATTHEW - University Of Alabama At Birmingham
item JOSEPH, TECTOR - University Of Alabama At Birmingham
item Lunney, Joan

Submitted to: Review Article
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/17/2019
Publication Date: 2/15/2020
Citation: Hammer, S.E., Ho, C., Ando, A., Rogel-Gaillard, C., Charles, M., Tector, M., Joseph, T.A., Lunney, J.K. 2020. Importance of the MHC (SLA) in swine health and biomedical research. Review Article. 8:171-198. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-animal-020518-115014.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-animal-020518-115014

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: In pigs, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), or swine leukocyte antigen (SLA) complex, maps to Sus scrofa chromosome 7. It consists of three regions, the class I and class III regions mapping to 7p1.1 and the class II region mapping to 7q1.1. The swine MHC region is divided by the centromere which is unique among mammals studied to date. The SLA complex spans between 2.4 to 2.7 megabases depending on haplotype and encodes approximately 150 loci with at least 120 genes predicted to be functional. Here we update the whole SLA region based on the Sscrofa11.1 build and annotate the organization for all recognized SLA genes and their allelic sequences. We present SLA nomenclature and typing methods and discuss the expression of SLA proteins as well as their role in antigen presentation, immune, disease and vaccine responses. Finally, we explore the role of SLA genes in transplantation and xenotransplantation and their importance in swine biomedical models.