CHARACTERIZATION OF THE BOVINE EPSILON-GENE

Immunoglobulin E is quantitatively a minor immunoglobulin class in ser um, but nevertheless the major class of antibody mediating type I hype rsensitivity reactions and hence, type I allergic phenomena. The bovin e E gene is one of the as yet uncharacterized mammalian immunoglobulin genes. We have therefore cloned and determined the cDNA sequence and genomic organization of the gene. It contains four constant region dom ain-encoding exons (CHI to CH4) with a high homology to sheep CE (87%) and to a lower degree to dog (62%), horse (58%), chimpanzee, oranguta n, human (55%), mouse (52%) and rat (52%) CE genes. Southern blot anal ysis of bovine genomic DNA, revealed the existence of a single C epsil on gene with a presence of allelic restriction fragment length polymor phism (RFLP).