Background. The dog has served as an important experimental model for biomedical
research such as transplantation and developing immunosuppressive agents. Although
major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in dogs is a dominant factor of graft rejection, it
has not been well investigated in dogs compared with human. For that reason, imprecise
cross-matching or time-consuming sequence-based typing methods have generally been
used to choose specific donor and recipient pairs. Investigation of matching distribution
of MHC in dogs with the use of simple and accurate methods would be beneficial for
biomedical researchers. The aim of this study was to identify the diversity of dog
leukocyte antigen (DLA) types in genetically unrelated dogs by means of microsatellite
markers.
Methods. Thirty-three Beagle and Shih-Tzu dogs, which were negative in cross-matching,
were chosen. The genomic DNA was isolated from peripheral blood leukocytes, and highly
polymorphic short tandem repeats located in MHC class I and II were amplified with the
use of specific primers.
Results. Among all of the dogs, MHC matching groups, including class I full matcheclass
II full match (M-M), class I full matcheclass II haplo match (M-H), class I haplo
matcheclass II full match (H-M), class I haplo matcheclass II haplo match (H-H) groups,
were w1.55%, 0.39%, 1.94%, and 6.59%, respectively. MHC class I nonmatcheclass II
nonmatch (U-U) groups were 58.14% of the total dogs.
Conclusions. Because differences of histocompatibility between donor and recipient
leads to various allograft rejections, knowledge of the distribution of MHC matching in
unrelated dogs would be helpful in designing studies and to get more accurate results from
experiments using dog transplantation models.