- A Heinold: Department of Transplantation Immunology, Institute of Immunology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
We describe three novel human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles found in three different Caucasians, HLA-A*240214, HLA-A*3215 and HLA-DQB1*060302. As compared with HLA-A*24020101, HLA-A*240214 has a synonymous nucleotide (nt) exchange in codon 132. HLA-A*240214 may have arisen from intergenic recombination between HLA-A*24020101 and an HLA-B or HLA-C allele. The second novel allele, HLA-A*3215, has three nucleotide exchanges as compared with HLA-A*320101. These variations result in amino acid exchanges in codons 62 and 63, generating the public epitope of the serological HLA-A10 group. The third novel allele, HLA-DQB1*060302, has one synonymous nucleotide exchange within codon 38 as compared with HLA-DQB1*060301. In a family segregation study, we found that HLA-DQB1*060302, similar to the known HLA-DQB1*060301 allele, cosegregates with HLA-DRB1*1301.