[Identification of a novel HLA allele DRB1*1462 by sequence-based typing]

This study was to identify a novel HLA-DRB1 allele in Chinese population by nucleotide sequence ana- lysis. The HLA typing of genes was performed by PCR-SSO and PCR-SSP, the ambiguous novel allele was identified by DNA sequence analysis. The results showed that the sequence of this new allele differed from DRB1*140101 by one nucleotide substitution at position 256 in exon 2 (G- > A), resulting in an amino acid change from Ala to Thr at codon 57. In conclusion, this allele is a novel one, which has been officially given the name DRB1*1462 by the WHO nomenclature committee in January 2006.