CLONING AND EXPRESSION OF CANINE INTERLEUKIN-10

We describe here the cloning of canine IL-10 cDNA (GenBank accession N o, U33843) and the expression of recombinant IL-10 in a dog kidney cel l line (DK6247) and Chinese hamster ovary cells (CHO). Canine IL-10 ex hibits strong sequence homology to the known sequences of human, mouse , rat, and bovine genes at nucleotide and amino acid levels. The IL-10 gene, when introduced into DK and CHO cell lines, produces recombinan t IL-10 that causes an inhibitory effect on allogeneic MHC-driven lymp hoproliferative responses.