Genetic diversity of KIR natural killer cell markers in populations from France, Guadeloupe, Finland, Senegal and Réunion

Abstract

Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) belong to a diverse family of natural killer (NK) cell receptors recognizing human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I molecules. Due to this functional link, KIR molecules are expected to display a high polymorphism, such as their HLA ligands. Moreover, many studies conducted in mouse and human models have shown that NK-KIR receptors play an important role in haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). A beneficial impact of peculiar KIR ligand (HLA) mismatching has been reported suggesting a role to this combinatory HLA-KIR polymorphism. It is thus important to investigate KIR diversity in various human populations. To this end, we used polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific primers to evaluate KIR gene in five selected populations (France, Guadeloupe, Senegal, Finland and Réunion). Genotypic and haplotypic frequencies were computed, as well as genetic distances and dendrogram (phylip package). These data illustrate the genetic relationship of these five populations through the KIR polymorphism. Results revealed a wide diversity in KIR gene frequencies in Guadeloupe and Réunion, and a high specificity in Senegal. The obtained dendrogram indicated small genetic distances between France, Guadeloupe and Réunion as well as between France and Finland. Senegal showed a distant genetic relationship with the other countries and, interestingly, an inverted ratio of coding/non-coding (KIR2DS4/1D) alleles compared with Caucasians. These data expose the broad diversity in KIR genes worldwide and show that KIR genes are pertinent tools in human population genetics. If the role of KIR donor-recipient incompatibilities is confirmed, KIR diversity according to ethnicity should be taken into account during the selection of HSCT donors.

Combination of KIR and HLA gene variants augments the risk of developing birdshot chorioretinopathy in HLA-A*29-positive individuals

“…Genotypes deleted for both KIR3DL1 and 2DS4 were reported to occur 5-7% in Caucasian populations including those studied from southeast 49 and western 50 France. The ubiquitous distribution of 3DL1 and 2DS4 was previously reported only in populations of African ancestry.…”

Receptor systems controlling natural killer cell function are genetically stratified in Europe

“…52 PCR-SSOP was carried out to confirm the presence or absence of KIR genes in Northern and Republic of Ireland populations as previously described. KIR gene and genotype frequencies of an additional 36 global population (4218 individuals from 38 different studies) were obtained from the published literature (35 populations [31][32][33]46,48,49,[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71] ) and from an online database www.allelefrequencies.net. 72 Genotypes were classified as follows: the absence of 2DL2, 2DL5, 3DS1, 2DS1, 2DS2, 2DS3 or 2DS5 indicates that an individual is homozygous for the A genotype (that is, AA).…”

Amplified NKG2C+ NK Cells in Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Infection Preferentially Express Killer Cell Ig-like Receptor 2DL: Functional Impact in Controlling CMV-Infected Dendritic Cells

“…HLA-A, -B, and -Cw genes were typed via molecular techniques using PCR-sequence-specific primer (SSP) kit from GenoVision (Olerup SSP HLA-A, -B, and -Cw, BioNoBis, Montfort l'Amaury, France) under the conditions recommended by the manufacturer. KIR genes were typed via molecular techniques using PCR-SSP methods under the conditions recommended by the manufacturers, as described previously (21,22).…”