DNA PROFILING IN 2 ALASKAN NATIVE POPULATIONS USING HLA-DQA1, PM, ANDD1S80 LOCI

Two Native Alaskan populations were sampled and DNA profiles were gene rated for 201 individuals. Ninety two blood samples were collected fro m the North Slope Borough region of Alaska and the remaining 109 blood samples came from Native Alaskans in the Bethel and Wade Hampton area s. Allele and genotype frequencies were established for the HLA-DQA1, LDLR, GYPA, HBGG, D7S8, Gc, and D1S80 loci. Native Alaskans are slight ly less polymorphic than Caucasians at the HLA-DQA1 locus. In contrast , the PM loci appear to be nearly as informative in the Native Alaskan populations as in Caucasians for identity testing. The data clearly d emonstrate that all the loci tested are highly informative for the Ala skan populations and fall well within Hardy-Weinberg expectations. The re is little evidence for departure from expectation of independence o f alleles across loci. The data demonstrate that estimates of multiple locus profile frequencies can be obtained from Native Alaskan populat ions using the product rule under the assumption of independence of lo ci. In addition, Native Alaskan databases were more similar to each ot her and to other Native American databases than they were to U.S. Cauc asians and African Americans.