Swine Leukocyte Antigen (SLA) class I allele typing of Danish swine herds and identification of commonly occurring haplotypes using sequence specific low and high resolution primers.

The swine major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genomic region (SLA) is extremely polymorphic comprising high numbers of different alleles, many encoding a distinct MHC class I molecule, which binds and presents endogenous peptides to circulating T cells of the immune system. Upon recognition of such peptide-MHC complexes (pMHC) naïve T cells can become activated and respond to a given pathogen leading to its elimination and the generation of memory cells. Hence SLA plays a crucial role in maintaining overall adaptive immunologic resistance to pathogens.