Immunology and Immunogenetics Insights

This note follows up on an observation concerning a possible frameshift in the DNA sequence of exon 2 of rabbit interleukin 4 (IL4) made in a comparative study of the rabbit Th2 cytokine region sequences from two different rabbits. One was from the tuberculosis-susceptible Thorbecke strain, whose whole genome was sequenced at Broad Institute (OryCun2.0), and the other a normal NZW rabbit studied as part of the ENCODE project. If present, a frameshift could have resulted in exon skipping and production of IL4d2 protein. We resequenced DNAs of the Thorbecke OryCun2.0 donor rabbit, another rabbit of the same strain, and a third rabbit of the inbred B/J strain in the region in question. All three had sequences identical to the normal NZW in the ENCODE ENm002 assembly in that region and hence no frameshift. The sequence information was submitted to GenBank and assigned accession numbers JQ687218 and JX073284.