An oriental HLA-A2 subtype is closely related to a subset of caucasoidHLA-A2alleles

✍ Scribed by Helen Epstein; Lorna J. Kennedy; Nicholas Holmes

• Book ID: 104755233
• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 446 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0093-7711
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00395859

✦ Synopsis

An important property of the genes encoding the class I glycoproteins of the mammalian major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is their high degree of polymorphism in most species. The mechanisms involved in generation of variation in the DNA sequences of these genes and the means by which new alleles increase in frequency and are maintained in the population are therefore of considerable interest. We have chosen to approach the first of these topics by studying the human class I genes, in particular the HLA-A locus.

Serological analyses at a series of international workshops have resulted in the identification of 20 different specificities or serotypes at the HLA-A locus. By far the most frequent HLA-A locus specificity is HLA-A2, which is found in about 50% of Caucasoids. The standard method used for HLA typing is a complement dependent cytotoxicity test employing alloantisera and monoclonal antibodies (mAb). The HLA-A2 antigen defined by these means actually consists of a family of many closely related alleles. The various HLA-A2 allelic products can be distinguished from one another by cytotoxic T cell recognition (Biddison et al.