Figure 3.

Western blotting of HLA-C*03 constructs containing exon 1 splice forms of increasing length indicate inclusion of a long ORF reduces protein expression. (A) Schematic illustrating splice forms utilized for the Western blot panel. Exons are indicated in bold. ORF start and stop codons are indicated by black and red lines, respectively. ORF Length is shown as blue text. Kozak sequence strength is indicated by the red asterisks, where at least one Kozak sequence enhancing nucleotide is present. The red box indicates the ORF associated with lower expression of a₁/b₁/c₃/1₅ and a₃/1₆. (B) Western blot comparing HLA-C*03 constructs with increasing exon 1 length. Alternative exons present in each construct are indicated on the left. ImageJ normalized lane intensities are indicated on the right. The results shown are representative of three independent experiments performed.