HLA-E typing of more than 2.5 million potential hematopoietic stem cell donors: Methods and population-specific allele frequencies
Jürgen Sauter, Kathrin Putke, Daniel Schefzyk, Jens Pruschke, Ute V. Solloch, Stefanie N. Bernas, Carolin Massalski, K. Daniel, Anja Klußmeier, Jan A. Hofmann, Vinzenz Lange, Alexander H. Schmidt
Abstract
We developed a cost-efficient workflow for genotyping HLA-E by NGS and applied it for genotyping more than 2.5 million potential stem cell donors. The data obtained were used to determine HLA-E allele frequency distributions for 104 populations. Our results confirm the known dominance of the alleles E*01:01 and E*01:03, which have a combined frequency of more than 0.99 in 97 of the 104 populations. E*01:01 is more frequent in Africa and the western part of South America, E*01:03 in Southeast and East Asia. E*01:03 shows a pronounced regional substructure at the high-resolution level with E*01:03:01G being particularly common in a large connected region extending from Turkey to China, E*01:03:02G in Northwestern Europe and E*01:03:03 in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Central Asia. The presented results are relevant both as a basis for further population genetics studies and for optimizing stem cell donor searches.