Mamu-DQA1 allele and genotype frequencies in a randomly sampled breeding colony of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

We studied the allelic and genotypic distribution of the major histocompati bility class-II locus DQA1 observed in a random sample of Indian rhesus mac aques (Macaca mulatta) from a major breeding facility in the United States. The DNA was isolated from whole blood samples collected between 1991 and 1 994 from 65 Indian rhesus monkeys. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fr agment length polymorphism analysis (PCR-RFLP), which involves use of speci fic amplification of DQA1 exon 2 and subsequent restriction digestion of th e 242-base pair fragment, was used to genotype the animals for the 20 known macaque (Mamu)-DQA1 alleles, Frequencies for four alleles (DQA1*240x, *250 2, *2503 and *0102) differed significantly from those reported in a smaller sample of rhesus macaques from the German Primate Center. The modest genet ic survey of Mamu-DQA1 genotypes presented here will be particularly useful in designing epidemiologic studies that investigate associations between i mmunogenetic background and disease susceptibility in macaque models of hum an disease.