Cross-Species Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Molecular and Functional Diversity of the Unconventional Interferon-? Subtype

Shields, Lauren E.; Jennings, Jordan; Liu, Qinfang; Lee, Jinhwa; Ma, Wenjun; Blecha, Frank; Miller, Laura C.; Sang, Yongming

Although human IFN-ω was previously determined as a leukocyte cytokine (20) , our expression assays indicate that the multiple genes of porcine IFN-ω subtype are differentially expressed in different tissues/cells, and that their expression could be in either constitutive or an induced manner by a viral infection. In general, the expression patterns of porcine IFN-ω genes liken to unconventional IFN subtypes such as IFN-ε/κ/δ than the IFN-α subtype in the constitutive situation ( Figure 5A ) (9, 13) ; however, the porcine IFN-ω genes showed their own pattern of induced expression during viral infection. Notwithstanding, the fact that more gene-specific assays to examine their diverse expression at both RNA and protein levels are needed. The current data imply the necessity for gene-specific (at least subtype-specific) expression and activity analysis for IFN-ω subtype, especially in the animal species such as pigs, bats, and cattle, where they show multi-gene expansion of IFN-ω subtype (13, 24) .