A preliminary analysis of the goat lactoferrin encoding gene.

Lactoferrin (Lf) is a glycoprotein with a molecular weight of ~80 kDa. It has been isolated from milk and identified in various different mammalian secretions. Several physiological functions have been ascribed to Lf, including regulation of cellular growth and differentiation, intestinal iron homeostasis , host defense against microbial infection and inflammation , regulation of myelopoiesis and protection against cancer. The coding sequence of bovine lactoferrin gene is spread over 17 exons and 16 introns, spanning 34.5 kb of genomic DNA. The bovine and caprine lactoferrin gene was mapped to chromosome 22. To date, only the nucleotide sequence of the goat Lf cDNA, 2333 bp in length, is known which contains 75 bp of 5’ UTR (Un Traslated Region), the ORF (Open Reading Frame) coding 690 aminoacid of mature protein and the whole 3’ UTR. The leader peptide from 19 full-length is codified by the last 14 codons of the exon 1 and the first five of the exon 2. The aim of this study was to carry out a preliminary analysis of the goat lactoferrin encoding gene, focusing on the region spanning from the 3rd to the 6th exon.