HLA-G GENE POLYMORPHISM SEGREGATION WITHIN CEPH REFERENCE FAMILIES

HLA-G, a nonclassical HLA class I antigen, presents tissue-restricted expression on human trophoblasts and may play an important role in imm une tolerance of mother-versus-fetus. In this work we have demonstrate d extensive HLA-G genomic polymorphism within three CEPH reference fam ilies, by PCR-SSCP analysis and direct sequencing. Among six unrelated parents we assigned eight HLA-G alleles, seven of which are new. We o bserved the segregation of HLA-G alleles of heterozygous parents among their offspring that matched the segregation of the HLA class I haplo types. Only one of the mutations observed was found to be nonsynonymou s indicating low polymorphism of the HLA-G molecule. Human Immunology 53, 140-147 (1997). (C) American Society for Histocompatibility and Im munogenetics, 1997.