Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II DO Alpha (MHCDOa)

HLA-DOA forms a heterodimer with HLA-DOB. The heterodimer, HLA-DO, is found in lysosomes in B cells and regulates HLA-DM-mediated peptide loading on MHC class II molecules. DX-alpha and DX-beta are genes identified first by DNA cloning. All of these genes appear to be intact and capable of functioning in that they do not contain deleterious mutations that would give rise to stop codons or frameshift mutations. All of the splice acceptor or donor signals correspond to consensus signals. Although it is tempting to conclude that DX, DO and DC are incipient pseudogenes with no important functions, several pieces of information tend to contradict this point of view. For one, some of these have been conserved between mouse and man, suggesting that they are functionally important.