SEROLOGIC AND NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCING ANALYSES OF A NOVEL DR52-ASSOCIATED DRB1 ALLELE WITH THE DR NJ25 SPECIFICITY, DESIGNATED DRB1-ASTERISK-1307

A novel DR52-associated DRB1* allele, designated DRB1*1307, was encountered in the course of our HLA-DRB1 genotyping study in a Japanese population by PCR-RFLP. Comparison of the nucleotide sequence of its second exon with those of the other known DRB1 alleles revealed that DRB1*1307 was most similar to DRB1*1101, differing by two amino acid substitutions. From a family study, DRB1*1307 was found to segregate with a haplotype of DRB3*0202-DQA1*0501-DQB1*0301type, which was also observed with DRB1*1101 in a Japanese population. DRB1*1307 was recognized in three of 652 healthy Japanese controls (gene frequency: 0.24%) with the same DR-DQ haplotype indicating that DRB1*1307 arose from DRB1*1101 by a gene conversionlike event(s) and/or point mutations. Further, it was also observed that this allele had a strong linkage disequilibrium with HLA-B70 (p < 0.001). This new DRB1*1307 allele was serologically defined as DR 'NJ25,' and it gave an almost identical serologic pattern to DRB1*1406. On sequence comparison, however, no unique amino acid residues conserved in DRB1*1406 and DRB1*1307 but absent in all the other DRB1 alleles could be found, indicating that two amino acid changes at positions 47 and 58 abolished the reactivity against the DR11 antisera.