HLA Primer Sets Achieve High- and Medium-Resolution Genotyping

New HLA Primer Sets achieve high- and medium-resolution genotyping of class I and class II loci of the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) genes.

Introduced by 454 Life Sciences (Branford, CT, USA), a Roche Company, the new GS GType New HLA Primer Sets are designed for use with the company's benchtop GS Junior and GS FLX next-generation sequencing systems–enabling high-resolution typing and unambiguous allele assignment in a single run.

The kits are the first in a series of assays in the areas of immunogenetics, infectious disease, and cancer to be launched for use with 454 Sequencing Systems, allowing scientists to integrate easily the platforms into application-specific laboratory workflows.

The HLA genes encode for the immune system proteins that recognize foreign cells and other antigens. Accurate characterization of an individual's HLA type is important for tissue transplantation matching, while variations in these genes have known association with a wide variety of autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, and some cancers.

The long, clonal reads provided by 454 Sequencing Systems enable straightforward high-resolution of multiple samples at a time. In many cases HLA typing achieves unambiguous allele identification within a single sequencing run. Sequence output is compatible with third party HLA genotyping software tools – offering scientists a complete solution from DNA to genotype assignment.

Genotyping of HLA genes can be challenging because of the highly polymorphic nature of this region of the human genome. Traditional sequence-based typing using Sanger capillary electrophoresis technology is unable to resolve ambiguities and set phase without requiring multiple iterations, interspersed with significant manual analysis of the data, and often the use of multiple technologies.

The GS GType HLA Primer Sets are the result of an extensive multisite study, which was published March, 2011 in the journal Tissue Antigens.

"454Sequencing Systems offer a major advance for high-resolution, high-throughput HLA typing,” explained Henry Erlich, PhD, senior study author and Director of the Department of Human Genetics at Roche Molecular Systems. "The ability to quickly achieve such high accuracy and resolution will have a significant impact on research and, ultimately, on clinical application of HLA typing.”

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