Fourteen IFN-alpha genes have been cloned in the mouse, sharing at least 75% identity at the protein level, alongside other Type I IFN family members such as limitin, IFN-omega, and IFN-epsilon. Expression of individual subtypes is controlled largely by IRF3 and IRF7 and varies by cell type, stimulus, and time course, which is why no single subtype fully represents "mouse IFN-alpha" in an experiment. PBL offers five of these subtypes as purified recombinant proteins: Alpha A, the field's standard reference; Alpha 1, Alpha 4, Alpha 11, and Alpha 13, each with distinct expression patterns and activity levels described below. Full cross-subtype naming is in the Mouse Interferon Alpha Nomenclature reference.
In therapeutic and translational research, human IFN-alpha is used to treat viral diseases and certain cancers, and mouse IFN-alpha subtypes are studied as models of those responses; a growing body of evidence also points to IFN-alpha's involvement in autoimmune disease, both as a contributor to pathology and, in some contexts, as a potential treatment.