HLA-DPB1, -DRB1, and -DQB1 polymorphism defined in Ewenki ethnic minority of China Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In the present study, DNA typing for human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-DPB1, -DRB1, and -DQB1 was performed using polymerase chain reaction-sequence-based-typing (PCR-SBT) method on 94 randomly selected, healthy, unrelated individuals from the Ewenki ethnic population in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. A total of 64 alleles: 25 in DRB1, 19 in DQB1 and 20 in DPB1, were found. Among the 25 detected DRB1 alleles, DRB1*090102, DRB1*030101, DRB1*040101, DRB1*070101, and DRB1*120101/1206 were commonly observed, with frequencies of 16.0%, 13.3%, 10.1%, 7.4%, and 7.4%, respectively. The most predominant DQB1 allele was DQB1*030101/0309 with the frequency of 27.7%, followed by DQB1*0201/0202 (19.7%), DQB1*030302 (12.8%), DQB1*060101/060103 (6.4%), and DQB1*050201 (5.9%). Of the 20 detected DPB1 alleles, DPB1*020102 was the most frequent allele with the frequency of 25.5%. DPB1*0402 (21.3%), DPB1*0401 (20.2%), DPB1*0501 (10.6%) and DPB1*4101 (3.7%) were also very frequent alleles. The most frequent two-locus haplotypes observed in the Ewenki were: DRB1*030101-DQB1*0201/0202(10.7%), DRB1*090102-DQB1*03032(9.8%), DRB1*070101-DQB1*0201/0202 (5.5%), DRB1*070101-DQB1*030302 (5.2%) and DRB1*120101/1206-DQB1*030101/0309 (4.6%). The distribution of the HLA class II alleles and haplotypes frequencies as well as the dendrogram showed that the Ewenki population belongs to the northern group of Chinese.