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

The sequence of the pig FcRn α 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 α 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 α chain may represent a sequencing error in the 3′ portion of the gene.