High impact information on H2-Bl

• Surprisingly, we found that alternative splicing of H2-Bl mRNA in gut tissues is prevalent and allele-specific [1].
• Analysis of coding region polymorphism performed here revealed two major alleles of H2-Bl with conserved residues at positions critical for class I protein folding and peptide binding [1].
• These results suggested a role for blastocyst MHC in protecting TAP-deficient trophoblasts and tumor cells from NK cell attack in vivo [2].
• The blastocyst MHC gene, like the human class I b gene HLA-G, is expressed at the blastocyst stage and in the placenta, and may be the mouse analog for HLA-G [3].
• The presence of this gene in mouse strains of different MHC class I haplotypes argues that blastocyst MHC is a unique, newly-described gene rather than a new allele of a previously described mouse MHC class I gene [3].

Biological context of H2-Bl

• Blastocyst MHC has the structure of an MHC class I b gene, with the six exons characteristic of T-region genes [3].

References