MAJOR HISTOCOMPATIBILITY COMPLEX CLASS-II ALLELES IN AN UYGUR POPULATION IN THE SILK ROUTE OF NORTHWEST CHINA

HLA class Il (DRB1, DQA1, DQB1 and DPB1) genotyping was performed in 5 7 unrelated Uygur individuals inhabiting the northwestern China area b y the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphi sm (PCR-RFLP) method. Among 98 DRB1 alleles tested, 23 alleles were de tected, and DRB10701 (16.7%) and DRB1*0301 (14.0%) were the most and the second most common alleles, respectively. In 8 DQA1 alleles detect ed, DQA105 (26.3%), DQA1*03 (21.9%) and DQA1*0201 (21.1%) were very f requent. Of 21 DQB1 alleles tested, 13 were observed. Among them, DQB1 02 was highly predominant with the gene frequency of 32.5%. Of 46 DPB 1 alleles tested, 15 were detected, among which DPB10401 (31.6%) was the most frequent. Two haplotypes predominate clearly; DRB10701-DQA1* 0201-DQB102 (15.5%) and DRB1*0301-DQB1*05-DQB1*02 (12.6%). The dendro gram constructed by the neighbour-joining (NJ) method based on the all ele frequencies of the DRB1, DQA1, DQB1 and DPB1 genes of 13 represent ative populations all over the world suggested that Uygur belonged to the Asian group and lay at the closest genetic distance to a Kazak pop ulation inhabiting the same area.