| Summary: | <p><strong>Background</strong>: bioinformatics is applicable to the design of drugs, the simulation of biological effects and in the inter-species comparison of molecules involved in different phenomena and diseases, such as allergies.</p><p><strong>Objective</strong>: to compare two key molecules in allergic conditions, by means of bioinformatic tools, between man and other animal species.</p><p><strong>Methods</strong>: interleukin 4 (IL-4) and high affinity Fc receptor of immunoglobulin E were selected as target molecules in species: man, mouse, rat and rabbit. Data from genes were retrieved from <em>Gene</em> database. Genomic level comparison was carried out by Ensembl, while multiple sequence alignments were done with MUSCLE tool and identity matrices were generated by Clustal2.1. <em>UCSC Genome Browser</em> was used for the graphical representation of sequence alignments and the occurrence of single nucleotide polymorphisms.</p><p><strong>Results</strong>: a greater similarity was found between coding sequences from man and rabbit for IL-4. Multiple sequence alignments for both molecules showed the highest scores of similarities in sequences from rabbit and man. Mononucleotide polymorphisms predominated in non-coding regions of IL-4.</p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong>: the results reported here support the usefulness of rabbit as a model for human diseases related to allergies, based on the similarities for both species in terms of the two molecules that are considered key in hypersensitivity phenomena.</p>
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