Diversity of HLA among Taiwan’s indigenous tribes and the Ivatans in the Philippines

Abstract

Taiwan's indigenous tribes, especially the east coast tribes are not only closely related to Oceania but also with the Australian aborigines. The Ivatans of the Batan Islands in the Philippines are closely related to the Yami tribe of Taiwan as cultural and anthropological studies have shown. Many DRB1 alleles (*15021, *16021, *0404, *04051, *11011, *12021, *1401, *08032) have high allele frequencies (>20%) in certain tribes, suggesting Taiwan's indigenous tribes are homogeneous populations. These high frequency DRB1 alleles and also some HLA-A-B-DR haplotypes found in Taiwan's indigenous tribes are also found in Oceania, Australian aborigines, south and north east Asians and American Indians, lending further support to our previous findings that Taiwan's indigenous tribes are more or less genetically related to both northern and southern Asians, possibly as well as Amerindians. HLA-A*2402 with a remarkably high frequency among Taiwan's indigenous tribes (52.1% approximately 86.3%), especially the central mountain tribes, possibly represents not only founder effects and population bottlenecks, but also positive selection of the allele. Although the Ami tribe has the highest ever reported frequencies of the DRB1*0404 and DRB1*0405, these alleles have not been found to be associated with rheumatoid arthritis as previously described for Caucasians. In addition, DRB1*1401 has a high frequency in most tribes but is not associated with psoriasis as previously indicated in some studies, suggesting the involvement of some additional genetic and/or environmental factors mechanism in the development of these diseases.

HLA-B*5801 allele as a genetic marker for severe cutaneous adverse reactions caused by allopurinol

“…Primers for HLA-C allele typing were: 5Cln1-61, 5Ј-AGCGAG-GKGCCCGCCCGGCGA-3Ј (forward); and 3BCln3-12, 5Ј-GGAGATGGGGAAGGCTCCCCACT-3Ј (reverse). The DRB1 alleles are separated into eight groups, DR1, DR2, DR3͞11͞6, DR4, DR7, DR8͞12, DR9, and DR10, for sequencing-based typing as described (14). The PCR was set up in a volume of 16 l, containing 50-100 ng of genomic DNA, 1ϫ PCR buffer [16 mM (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 ͞67 mM Tris⅐HCl, pH 8.8͞0.01% Tween 20], 2.5 mM MgCl 2 , 200 M each of dNTP, 5% DMSO, 0.02 mg͞ml cresol red, and 0.…”

“…5 units of EuroTaq polymerase (Euroclone, Spa, Milan). Cycling was carried out by using the described sequencing-based typing protocol (13,14).…”

Distributions of human leukocyte antigen–A, –B, and –DRB1 alleles and haplotypes based on 46,915 Taiwanese donors

“…These tribes are not only very much different from the Taiwanese Han group, but also their intertribal diversity is high in many other ways as well. Nevertheless, previous population studies, either based on HLA class I antigens [13] or HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 alleles [14] showed a tendency for the indigenous tribes to be clustered together. On the account of these observations, we divided the general Taiwanese population into the Taiwanese (Taiwanese Han group) and the Taiwanese aborigines in this study.…”

HLA-DRB1 polymorphism on Ha'ano island of the Kingdom of Tonga

“…For the Balopa islanders, the average allele frequency of the Perelik, Solang, and Mouk villages was calculated. In addition, published data on DRB1*0901 allele frequencies were obtained for the following Asian populations: Singapore Chinese and Thai (Imanishi et al, 1992); Ainu (Bannnai et al, 1996); Japanese, Northern Ha, and Man (Tanaka et al, 1997); Okinawa (Hatta et al, 1999); and Taiwanese (Chu et al, 2001). …”