ORGANIZATION OF THE OVINE IMMUNOGLOBULIN-C-EPSILON GENE LOCUS - EVIDENCE FOR A DELETION 5' OF THE GENE

A cosmid clone containing the ovine and C-epsilon and C-alpha immunogl obulin heavy chain genes was isolated and characterised. Restriction m apping and sequence analysis showed a high degree of similarity betwee n the bovine and ovine C-epsilon loci. Restriction fragment length pol ymorphism (RFLP) analysis of sheep genomic DNA revealed Mendelian inhe ritance of polymorphisms with identical variation in allele size for v arious restriction enzymes. This identical variation suggested that a deletion of approximately 100 bp existed at the 5' end of the smaller alleles.