The absence of disease-specific polymorphisms within the HLA-B51 gene that is the susceptible locus for Behcet's disease

Sano, K., Yabuki, K., Imagawa, Y., Shiina, T., Mizuki, N., Ohno, S., Kulski, J.K. and Inoko, H. (2001) The absence of disease-specific polymorphisms within the HLA-B51 gene that is the susceptible locus for Behcet's disease. Tissue Antigens, 58 (2). pp. 77-82.

Abstract

Behçet's disease is known to be associated with HLA-B51 in many different populations. Genetic evidence supports that the susceptible gene for Behçet's disease is the HLA-B51 allele at the HLA-B locus. This study was aimed to determine the HLA-B51 nucleotide sequence variation in three Behçet's disease patients and three healthy controls in order to elucidate if any disease specific mutations or polymorphisms may exist in the HLA-B51 gene of patients. Long-range polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was first carried out to give a PCR-amplified product of 9.5 kb which was then used as a template for nested PCR to give a final amplified product of 4.2 kb. This final product containing the 1.3-kb promoter/enhancer region and the entire HLA-B gene except for a 363-bp 3′ terminal end segment encoding the 3′ untranslated region was subcloned by the BP cloning technique and sequenced. The sequencing results showed that all the patients possessed the HLA-B*51011 allele, and there were no differences in the exonic nucleotide sequences between the three Behçet's disease patients and the three healthy controls. The HLA-B*51011 intronic and promoter/enhancer nucleotide sequences from the three patients had 22 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a single insertion of 6 bp and a single deletion of 2 bp. On the other hand, the three healthy controls had 24 SNPs in their intronic and promoter/enhancer regions. However, none of these polymorphisms in the patients were specific for the disease. Therefore, these results clearly demonstrate that the HLA-B exonic sequence that encodes the HLA-B51 allele is the real pathogenic factor in Behçet's disease.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	Centre for Comparative Genomics
Publisher:	Blackwell Publishing
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/35821

Item Control Page