THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE HLA-DQ-ALPHA ALLELES AND GENOTYPES IN THE TURKISH POPULATION AS DETERMINED BY THE USE OF DNA AMPLIFICATION AND ALLELE-SPECIFIC OLIGONUCLEOTIDES

Allele and genotype frequencies for the HLA-DQ alpha locus were determ ined for use in forensic analyses in Turkey. The polymerase chain reac tion and the reverse dot blot format were employed to detect six diffe rent HLA DQ alpha alleles, which were detected among 150 unrelated ind ividuals with allele frequencies ranging from 7% to 26.7%. The distrib ution of the observed genotypes was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The discrimination power of this system in the Turkish population sample was 0.94, and the allelic diversity was 0.81. This study provides supp ort for the validity of the HLA-DQ alpha procedure for typing forensic samples.